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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap. Copyri^;No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



(iCt)e J^iberi^ibe ^io0rapl[)ical ^ttit^ 



ANDREW JACKSON, by W. G. Brown 
JAMES B. EADS, by Louis How 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by Paul E. More 
PETER COOPER, by R. W. Raymond 
THOMAS JEFFERSON, by H. C. Merwin 
WILLIAM PENN, by George Hodges 
GENERAL GRANT. {In Preparation) 
LEWIS AND CLARK, by William R. Ligh- 
ton. {In preparation) 

Each about loo pages, i6mo, with photogravure 
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
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©tie HiUer0iDe Biographical ^eriesf 

NUMBER 5 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

BY 

HENRY CHILDS MERWIN 




jy !..iSjtS^ ^^ 'gagg- -/Z- ■rJmi.AIS''' 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 



BY 



HENRY CHILDS MERWIN 




HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue 



Library of Conflreas 

Iwo Copies Rcceiveo 
FEB 4 1901 



S' 



Copyright antry 



G 

SECOND COPY 






COPYRIGHT, I901, BY HENRY C. MERWIN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CONTENTS 



I. Youth and Training 
II. Virginia in Jefferson's Day 

III. MoNTICEIiLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 

IV. Jefferson in the Revolution 
V. Reform Work in Virginla. 

VI. Governor of Virginia 
Vn. Envoy at Paris 
VIII. Secretary of State 
IX. The Two Parties 
X. President Jefferson . 
XL Second Presidential Term . 
XII. A Public Man in Private Life 



1 

16 

28 

36 

45 

59 

71 

82 

98 

114 

130 

149 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 

Thomas Jefferson was born upon a 
frontier estate in Albemarle County, Vir- 
ginia, April 13, 1743. His fatter, Peter 
Jefferson, was of Welsh descent, not of aris- 
tocratic birtli, but of that yeoman class which 
constitutes the backbone of all societies. 
The elder Jefferson had uncommon powers 
both of mind and body. His strength was 
such that he could simultaneously " head 
up " — that is, raise from their sides to an 
upright position — two hogsheads of tobacco, 
weighing nearly one thousand pounds apiece. 
Like Washington, he was a surveyor ; and 
there is a tradition that once, while running 
his lines through a vast wilderness, his as- 
sistants gave out from famine and fatigue. 



2 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and Peter Jefferson pushed on alone, sleep- 
ing at night in hollow trees, amidst howling 
beasts of prey, and subsisting on the flesh 
of a pack mule which he had been obliged 
to kill. 

Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father 
a love of mathematics and of literature. 
Peter Jefferson had not received a classical 
education, but he was a diligent reader of a 
few good books, chiefly Shakespeare, The 
Spectator, Pope, and Swift ; and in master- 
ing these he was forming his mind on great 
literature after the manner of many another 
Virginian, — for the houses of that colony 
held English books as they held English 
furniture. The edition of Shakespeare (and 
it is a handsome one) which Peter Jefferson 
used is still preserved among the heirlooms 
of his descendants. 

It was probably in liis capacity of surveyor 
that Mr. Jefferson made the acquaintance 
of the Randolph family, and he soon became 
the bosom friend of William Randolph, the 
young proprietor of Tuckahoe. The Ran- 
dolphs had been for ages a family of con- 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 3 

sideration in the midland counties of Eng- 
land, claiming descent from the Scotch Earls 
of Murray, and connected by blood or mar- 
riage with many of the English nobility. In 
1735 Peter Jefferson established liimseK as 
a planter by patenting a thousand acres of 
land in Goochland County, his estate lying 
near and partly including the outlying hills, 
which form a sort of picket line for the 
Blue Mountain range. At the same time 
his friend William Randolph patented an 
adjoining estate of twenty-four hundred 
acres ; and inasmuch as there was no good 
site for a house on Jefferson's estate, Mr. 
Randolph conveyed to him four hundred 
acres for that purpose, the consideration ex- 
pressed in the deed, which is still extant, 
being " Henry Weatherboiirne's biggest 
bowl of Arrack punch." 

Here Peter Jefferson built his house, and 
here, three years later, he brought his bride, 
— a handsome girl of nineteen, and a kins- 
woman of William Randolph, being Jane, 
oldest child of Isham Randolph, then Adju- 
tant-General of Virginia. She was born in 



4 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

London, in the parish of Shadwell, and Shad- 
well was the name given by Peter Jefferson 
to his estate. This marriage was a fortunate 
union of the best aristocratic and yeoman 
strains in Virginia. 

In the year 1744 the new County of Al- 
bemarle was carved out of Goochland County, 
and Peter Jefferson was appointed one of 
the three justices who constituted the county 
court and were the real rulers of the shire. 
He was made also Surveyor, and later Colonel 
of the county. This last office was regarded 
as the chief provincial honor in Virginia, and 
it was especially important when he held it, 
for it was the time of the French war, and 
Albemarle was in the debatable land. 

In the midst of that war, in August, 
1757, Peter Jefferson died suddenly, of a 
disease which is not recorded, but which was 
probably produced by fatigue and exposure. 
He was a strong, just, kindly man, sought 
for as a protector of the widow and the 
orphan, and respected and loved by Indians 
as well as white men. Upon his deathbed 
he Left two injunctions regarding his son 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 5 

Thomas : one, that he should receive a clas- 
sical education ; the other, that he should 
never be permitted to neglect the physical 
exercises necessary for health and strength. 
Of these dying commands his son often 
spoke with gi-atitude ; and he used to say 
that if he were obliged to choose between 
the education and the estate which his father 
gave him, he would choose the education. 
Peter Jefferson left eight children, but only 
one son besides Thomas, and that one died 
in infancy. Less is Imown of Jefferson's 
mother ; but he derived from her a love of 
music, an extraordinary keenness of sus- 
ceptibility, and a corresponding refinement 
of taste. 

His father's death left Jefferson his own 
master. In one of his later letters he says : 
" At fourteen years of age the whole care 
and direction of myself were thrown on my- 
self entirely, without a relative or a friend 
qualified to advise or guide me." 

The first use that he made of his liberty 
was to change his school, and to become a 
pupil of the Rev. James Maury, — an ex- 



6 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

cellent clergyman and scholar, of Huguenot 
descent, who had recently settled in Albe- 
marle County. With him young Jefferson 
continued for two years, studjdng Greek and 
Latin, and becoming noted, as a schoolmate 
afterward reported, for scholarship, industry, 
and shyness. He was a good runner, a 
keen fox-hunter, and a bold and graceful 
rider. 

At the age of sixteen, in the spring of 
1760, he set out on horseback for Williams- 
burg, the capital of Virginia, where he pro- 
posed to enter the college of William and 
Mary. Up to this time he had never seen 
a town, or even a village, except the hamlet 
of Charlottesville, which is about four miles 
from Shadwell. Williamsburg — described 
in contemporary language as "the centre of 
taste, fashion, and refinement " — was an 
unpaved village, of about one thousand in- 
habitants, surrounded by an expanse of dark 
green tobacco fields as far as the eye could 
reach. It was, however, well situated upon 
a plateau midway between the York and 
James rivers, and was swept by breezes 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 7 

which tempered the heat of the summer sun 
and kept the town free from mosquitoes. 

Williamsburg was also well laid out, and 
it has the honor of having served as a model 
for the city of Washington. It consisted 
chiefly of a single street, one hundred feet 
broad and three quarters of a mile long, 
with the capitol at one end, the college at 
the other, and a ten-acre square with public 
buildings in the middle. Here in his palace 
lived the colonial governor. The town also 
contained " ten or twelve gentlemen's fami- 
lies, besides merchants and tradesmen." 
These were the permanent inhabitants ; 
and during the "season" — the midwinter 
months — the planters' families came to 
town in their coaches, the gentlemen on 
horseback, and the little capital was then a 
scene of gayety and dissipation. 

Such was Williamsburg in 1760 when 
Thomas Jefferson, the frontier planter's son, 
rode slowly into town at the close of an early 
spring day, surveying with the outward in- 
difference, but keen inward curiosity of a 
countryman, the place which was to be his 



8 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

residence for seven years, — in one sense the 
most important, because the most formative, 
period of his life. He was a tall stripling, 
rather slightly built, — after the model of 
the Randolphs, — but extremely well-knit, 
muscular, and agile. His face was freckled, 
and his features were somewhat pointed. His 
hair is variously described as red, reddish, 
and sandy, and the color of his eyes as blue, 
gray, and also hazel. The expression of his 
face was frank, cheerful, and engaging. He 
was not handsome in youth, but " a very 
\ good-looking man in middle age, and quite a 
handsome old man." At maturity he stood 
six feet two and a haK inches. " Mr. Jef- 
ferson," said Mr. Bacon, at one time the 
superintendent of his estate, " was well pro- 
portioned and straight as a gun-barrel. He 
was like a fine horse, he had no surplus flesh. 
He had an iron constitution, and was very 
strong." 
-^ Jefferson was always the most cheerful and 
optimistic of men. He once said, after re- 
marking that something must depend " on 
the chapter of events ; " "I am in the habit 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 9 

of turning over the next leaf with hope, and, / 
though it often fails me, there is still an- 
other and another behind." No doubt this 
sanguine trait was due in part at least to 
his almost perfect health. He was, to use 
his own language, " blessed with organs of 
digestion which accepted and concocted, 
without ever murmuring, whatever the pal- * 
ate chose to consign to them." His habits 
through life were good. He never smoked, 
he drank wine in moderation, he went to 
bed early, he was regular in taking exercise, 
either by walking or, more commonly, by 
riding on horseback. 

The college of William and Mary in Jef- 
ferson's day is described by Mr. Parton as 
" a medley of college, Indian mission, and 
grammar school, ill-governed, and distracted 
by dissensions among its ruling powers." 
But Jefferson had a thirst for knowledge 
and a capacity for acquiring it, which made 
him almost independent of institutions of 
learning. Moreover, there was one profes- 
sor who had a large share in the formation 
of his mind. " It was my great good for- 



10 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tune," he wrote in his brief autobiography, 
"and what probably fixed the destinies of 
my life, that Dr. William Small, of Scotland, 
was then professor of mathematics ; a man 
profound in most of the useful branches of 
science, with a happy talent of communica- 
^^^ tion and an enlarged liberal mind. He, most 
happily for me, soon became attached to me, 
and made me his daily companion when not 
engaged in the school ; and from his conver- 
sation I got my first views of the expansion 
of science, and of the system of things in 
which we are placed." 

Jefferson, hke all well-bred Virginians, 
was brought up as an Episcopalian ; but as 
a young man, perhaps owing in part to the 
influence of Dr. Small, he ceased to believe 
in Christianity as a religion, though he always 
at home attended the Episcopal church, and 
though his daughters were brought up in that 
faith. If any theological term is to be ap- 
plied to him, he should be called a Deist, 
Upon the subject of his religious faith, 
Jefferson was always extremely reticent. 
To one or two friends only did he disclose 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 11 

his creed, and that was in letters which were 
published after his death. When asked, 
even by one of his own family, for his opin- 
ion upon any religious matter, he invariably 
refused to express it, saying that every per- 
son was bound to look into the subject for 
himself, and to decide upon it conscientiously, 
unbiased by the opinions of others. 

Dr. Small introduced Jefferson to other 
valuable acquaintances; and, boy though he 
was, he soon became the fourth in a group 
of friends which embraced the three most 
notable men in the little metropolis. These 
were, beside Dr. Small, Francis Fauquier, 
the acting governor of the province, ap- 
pointed by the crown, and George Wythe. 
Fauquier was a courtly, honorable, highly 
cultivated man of the world, a disciple of 
Voltaire, and a confirmed gambler, who had 
in this respect an unfortunate influence upon 
the Virginia gentry, — not, however, upon 
Jefferson, who, though a lover of horses, 
and a frequenter of races, never in his life 
gambled or even played cards. Wythe was 
then just beginning a long and honorable 



12 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

career as lawyer, statesman, professor, and 
judge. He remained always a firm and in- 
timate friend of Jefferson, who spoke of him, 
after liis death, as " my second father." It 
is an interesting fact that Thomas Jefferson, 
John Marshall, and Henry Clay were all, 
in succession, law students in the office of 
George Wythe. 

Many of the government officials and 
planters who flocked to Williamsburg in 
the winter were related to Jefferson on his 
mother's side, and they opened their houses 
to him with Virginia hospitality. We read 
also of dances in the " Apollo," the ball-room 
of the old Raleigh tavern, and of musical 
parties at Gov. Fauquier 's house, in which 
Jefferson, who was a skilKul and enthusiastic 
fiddler, always took part. " I suppose," he 
remarked in his old age, " that during at 
least a dozen years of my life, I played no 
less than three hours a day." 

At this period he was somewhat of a 
dandy, very particular about his clothes and 
equipage, and devoted, as indeed he remained 
through life, to fine horses. Virginia im- 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 13 

ported more thoroughbred horses than any- 
other colony, and to this day there is prob- 
ably a greater admixture of thoroughbred 
blood there than in any other State. Dio- 
med, winner of the first English Derby, 
was brought over to Virginia in 1799, and 
founded a family which, even now, is highly 
esteemed as a source of speed and endurance. 
Jefferson had some of his colts ; and both 
for the saddle and for his carriage he always 
used high-bred horses. 

Referring to the Williamsburg period of 
his life, he wrote once to a grandson : " When 
I recollect the various sorts of bad company 
with which I associated from time to time, I 
am astonished I did not turn off with some of 
them, and become as worthless to society as 
they were. . . . But I had the good fortune 
to become acquainted very early with some 
characters of very high standing, and to feel 
the incessant wish that I could ever become 
what they were. Under temptations and dif- 
ficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. 
Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in 
this situation ? What course in it will as- 



14 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

sure me their approbation? I am certain 
that this mode of deciding on my conduct 
tended more to correctness than any reason- 
ing powers that I possesed." 

This passage throws a light upon Jeffer- 
son's character. It does not seem to occur to 
him that a young man might require some 
stronger motive to keep his passions in check 
than could be furnished either by the wish 
to imitate a good example or by his " rea- 
soning powers." To Jefferson's well-regu- 
lated mind the desire for approbation was a 
sufficient motive. He was particularly sen- 
^ sitive, perhaps morbidly so, to disapproba- 
tion. The respect, the good-will, the affec- 
tion of his countrymen were so dear to him 
that the desire to retain them exercised a 
great, it may be at times, an undue influence 
upon him. " I find," he once said, " the pain 
/ of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, 
is more acute than the pleasure of much 
praise." 

During his second year at college, Jeffer- 
son laid aside all frivolities. He sent home 
his horses, contenting himself with a mile 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 15 

run out and back at nightfall for exercise, 
and studying, if we may believe the biogra- 
pher, no less than fifteen hours a day. This 
intense application reduced the time of his 
college course by one haK; and after the 
second winter at Williamsburg he went home 
with a degree in his pocket, and a volume of 
Coke upon Lytleton in his trunk. 



II 

VIRGINIA IN Jefferson's day 

To a young Virginian of Jefferson's stand- 
ing but two active careers were open, law and 
politics, and in almost every case these two, 
sooner or later, merged in one. The condi- 
tion of Virginia was very different from that 
of New England, — neither the clerical nor 
the medical profession was held in esteem. 
There were no manufactures, and there was 
no general commerce. 

Nature has divided Virginia into two parts : 
the mountainous region to the west and the 
broad level plain between the mountains and 
the sea, intersected by numerous rivers, in 
which, far back from the ocean, the tide 
ebbs and flows. In this tide-water region 
were situated the tobacco plantations which 
constituted the wealth and were inhabited by 
the aristocracy of the colony. Almost every 
planter lived near a river and had his own 



VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 17 

wharf, whence a schooner carried his tobacco 
to London, and brought back wines, silks, 
velvets, guns, saddles, and shoes. 

The small proprietors of land were com- 
paratively few in number, and the whole 
constitution of the colony, political and so- 
cial, was aristocratic. Both real estate and 
slaves descended by force of law to the eldest 
son, so that the great properties were kept 
intact. There were no townships and no 
town meetings. The political unit was the 
parish ; for the Episcopal church was the es- 
tablished church, — a state institution ; and 
the parishes were of great extent, there being, 
as a rule, but one or two parishes in a county. 

The clergy, though belonging to an estab- 
lishment, were poorly paid, and not revered as 
a class. They held the same position of infe- 
riority in respect to the rich planters which 
the clergy of England held in respect to the 
country gentry at the same period. Being 
appointed by the crown, they were selected 
without much regard to fitness, and they 
were demoralized by want of supervision, 
for there were no resident bishops, and, 



18 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

further, by the uncertain character of their 
incomes, which, being paid in tobacco, were 
subject to great fluctuations. A few were 
men of learning and virtue who performed 
their duties faithfully, and eked out their 
incomes by taking pupils. " It was these 
few," remarks Mr. Parton, " who saved civil- 
ization in the colony." A few others be- 
came cultivators of tobacco, and acquired 
wealth. But the greater part of the clergy 
were companions and hangers-on of the rich 
planters, — examples of that type which 
Thackeray so well describes in the character 
of Parson Sampson in "The Virginians." 
Strange tales were told of these old Virginia 
parsons. One is spoken of as pocketing 
annually a hundred dollars, the revenue of a 
legacy for preaching four sermons a year 
against atheism, gambling, racing, and swear- 
ing, — for all of which vices, except the first, 
he was notorious. 

This period, the middle half of the eigh- 
teenth century, was, as the reader need not 
be reminded, that in which the English 
church sank to its lowest point. It was the 



VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 19 

era when the typical country parson was a 
convivial fox-hunter; when the Fellows of 
colleges sat over their wine from four o'clock, 
their dinner hour, till midnight or after; 
when the highest type of bishop was a 
learned man who spent more time in his 
private studies than in the duties of his 
office; when the cathedrals were neglected 
and dirty, and the parish churches were 
closed from Sunday to Sunday. In Eng- 
land, the reaction produced Methodism, and, 
later, the Tractarian movement ; and we are 
told that even in Virginia, " swarms of Meth- 
odists, Moravians, and New-Light Presbyte- 
rians came over the border from Pennsylva- 
nia, and pervaded the colony." 

Taxation pressed with very unequal force 
upon the poor, and the right of voting was 
confined to freeholders. There was no sys- 
tem of public schools, and the great mass 
of the people were ignorant and coarse, but 
morally and physically sound, — a good sub- 
structure for an aristocratic society. Wealth 
being concentrated mainly in the hands of a 
few, Virginia presented striking contrasts of 



20 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

luxury and destitution, whereas in the neigh- 
boring colony of Pennsylvania, where wealth 
was more distributed and society more de- 
mocratic, thrift and prosperity were far more 
common. 

" In Pennsylvania," relates a foreign trav- 
eler, " one sees great numbers of wagons 
drawn by four or more fine fat horses. . . . 
In the slave States we sometimes meet a 
ragged black boy or girl driving a team con- 
sisting of a lean cow and a mule ; and I have 
seen a mule, a bull, and a cow, each miserable 
in its appearance, composing one team, with 
a half-naked black slave or two riding or 
driving as occasion suited." And yet be- 
tween Richmond and Fredericksburg, "in 
the afternoon, as our road lay through the 
woods, I was surprised to meet a family 
party traveling along in as elegant a coach 
as is usually met with in the neighborhood 
of London, and attended by several gayly 
dressed footmen." 

Virginia society just before the Revolution 
perfectly illustrated Buckle's remark about 
leisure : " Without leisure, science is impos- 



VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 21 

sible ; and when leisure has been won, most 
of the class possessing it will waste it in the 
pursuit of pleasure, and a few will employ 
it in the pursuit of knowledge." Men like 
Jefferson, George Wythe, and Madison used 
their leisure for the good of their fellow- 
beino-s and for the cultivation of their minds ; 
whereas the greater part of the planters — 
and the poor whites imitated them — spent 
their ample leisure in sports, in drinking, and 
in absolute idleness. " In spite of the Vir- 
ginians' love for dissipation," wrote a famous 
French traveler, "the taste for reading is 
commoner among men of the first rank than 
in any other part of America ; but the popu- 
lace is perhaps more ignorant there than 
elsewhere." "The Virginia virtues," says 
Mr. Henry Adams, " were those of the field 
and farm — the simple and straightforward 
mind, the notions of courage and truth, the 
absence of mercantile sharpness and quick- 
ness, the rusticity and open-handed hospi- 
tality." Virginians of the upper class were 
remarkable for their high-bred courtesy, — a 
trait so inherent that it rarely disappeared 



22 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

even in the bitterness of political disputes 
and divisions. This, too, was the natural 
product of a society based not on trade or 
commerce, but on land. " I blush for my 
own people," wrote Dr. Channing, from Vir- 
ginia, in 1791, "when I compare the selfish 

/ prudence of a Yankee with the generous con- 
fidence of a Virginian. Here I find great 
vices, but greater virtues than I left behind 
me." There was a largeness of temper and 
of feeling in the Virginia aristocracy, which 
seems to be inseparable from people living 
in a new country, upon the outskirts of civ- 
ilization. They had the pride of birth, but 
they recognized other claims to considera- 
tion, and were as far as possible from esti- 

j mating a man according to the amount of 

^ his wealth. 

Slavery itself was probably a factor for 
good in the character of such a man as Jef- 
ferson, — it afforded a daily exercise in the 
virtues of benevolence and self-control. How 
he treated the blacks may be gathered from 
a story, told by his superintendent, of a slave 
named Jim who had been caught stealing 



VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 23 

nails from the nail-factory : " When Mr. 
Jefferson came, I sent for Jim, and I never 
saw any person, white or black, feel as badly 
as he did when he saw his master. The tears 
streamed down his face, and he begged for 
pardon over and over again. I felt very 
badly myself. Mr. Jefferson turned to me 
and said, ' Ah, sir, we can't punish him. He 
has suffered enough already.' He then talked 
to him, gave him a heap of good advice, and 
sent him to the shop. . . . Jim said : ' Well 
I 'se been a-seeking religion a long time, but 
I never heard anything before that sounded 
so, or made me feel so, as I did when Master 
said, " Go, and don't do so any more," and 
now I 'se determined to seek religion till I 
find it ; ' and sure enough he afterwards 
came to me for a permit to go and be bap- 
tized. . . . He was always a good servant 
afterward." 

Another element that contributed to the 
efficiency and the high standard of the early 
Virginia statesman was a good, old-fashioned 
classical education. They were familiar, to 
use Matthew Arnold's famous expression, ^ 



^ 



24 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

" with the best that has ever been said or 
done." This was no small advantage to men 
who were called upon to act as founders of 
a republic different indeed from the repub- 
lics of Greece and Rome, but still based upon 
the same principles, and demanding an 
exercise of the same heroic virtues. The 
American Revolution would never have cut 
quite the figure in the world which history 
assigns to it, had it not been conducted with 
a kind of classic dignity and decency ; and 
to this result nobody contributed more than 
Jefferson. 

Such was Virginia in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, — at the base of society, the slaves ; 
next, a lower class, rough, ignorant, and 
somewhat brutal, but still wholesome, and 
possessing the primitive virtues of courage 
and truth ; and at the top, the landed gen- 
try, luxurious, proud, idle and dissipated 
for the most part, and yet blossoming into 
a few characters of a tyj)e so high that the 
world has hardly seen a better. Had he 
been born in Europe, Jefferson would doubt- 
less have devoted himself to music, or to 



VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 25 

architecture, or to literature, or to science, 
— for in all these directions his taste was 
nearly equally strong ; but these careers be- 
ing closed to him by the circumstances of 
the colony, he became a lawyer, and then, 
under pressure of the Revolution, a politician 
and statesman. 

During the four years following his grad- 
uation, Jefferson spent most of the winter 
months at Williamsburg, pursuing his legal 
and other studies, and the rest of the year 
upon the family plantation, the management 
of which had devolved upon him. Now, as 
always, he was the most industrious of men. 
He lived, as Mr. Parton remarks, " with a 
pen in his hand." He kept a garden book, 
a farm book, a weather book, a receipt book, 
a cash book, and, while he practiced law, a 
fee book. Many of these books are still pre- 
served, and the entries are as legible now as 
when they were first written down in Jef- 
ferson's small but clear and graceful hand, — 
the hand of an artist. Jefferson, as one of 
his old friends once remarked, hated super- 
ficial knowledge ; and he dug to the roots of 



26 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the common law, reading deeply in old re- 
ports written in law French and law Latin, 
and especially studying Magna Charta and 
Bracton. 

He found time also for riding, for music, 
and dancing ; and in his twentieth year he 
became enamored of Miss Rebecca Burwell, 
a Williamsburg belle more distinguished, 
tradition reports, for beauty than for clever- 
ness. But Jefferson was not yet in a posi- 
tion to marry, — he even contemplated a 
foreign tour; and the girl, somewhat ab- 
ruptly, married another lover. The wound 
seems not to have been a deep one. Jeffer- 
son, in fact, though he found his cliief happi- 
ness in family affection, and though capable 
of strong and lasting attachments, was not 
the man for a romantic passion. He was a 
philosopher of the reasonable, eighteenth- 
century type. No one was more kind and 
just in the treatment of his slaves, but he 
did not free them, as George Wythe, perhaps 
foolislily, did; and he was even cautious 
about promulgating his views as to the folly 
and wickedness of slavery, though he did his 



VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 27 

best to promote its abolition by legislative 
measures. There was not in Jefferson the 
material for a martyr or a Don Quixote ; 
but that was Nature's fault, not his. It may 
be said of every particular man that there 
is a certain depth to which he cannot sink, 
and there is a certain height to which he 
cannot rise. Within the intermediate zone 
there is ample exercise for free-will ; and no 
man struggled harder than Jefferson to ful- 
fill all the obligations which, as he conceived, 
were laid upon him. 



Ill 

MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 

In April, 1764, Jefferson came of age, 
and his first public act was a characteristic 
one. For the benefit of the neighborhood, 
he procured the passage of a statute to au- 
thorize the dredging of the Rivanna River 
upon which his own estate bordered in part. 
He then by private subscriptions raised a 
sum sufficient for carrying out this purpose ; 
and in a short time the stream, upon which 
before a bark canoe would hardly have 
floated, was made available for the transpor- 
tation of farm produce to the James River, 
and thence to the sea. 

In 1766, he made a journey to Philadel- 
phia, in order to be inoculated for smallpox, 
traveling in a light gig drawn by a high- 
spirited horse, and narrowly escaping death 
by drowning in one of the numerous rivers 
which had to be forded between Charlottes- 



MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 29 

ville and Philadelphia. In the following 
year, about the time of his twenty-fourth 
birthday, he was admitted to the bar, and 
entered almost immediately upon a large 
and lucrative practice. He remained at the 
bar only seven years, but during most of 
this time his professional income averaged 
more than <£2500 a year ; and he increased 
his paternal estate from 1900 acres to 5000 
acres. He argued with force and fluencj^, 
but his voice was not suitable for public 
speaking, and soon became husky. More- 
over, Jefferson had an intense repugnance 
to the arena. He shrank with a kind of 
nervous horror from a personal contest, and 
hated to be drawn into a discussion. The 
turmoil and confusion of a public body were 
hideous to him ; — it was as a writer, not as 
a speaker, that he won fame, first in the 
Virginia Assembly, and afterward in the 
Continental Congress. 

In October, 1768, Jefferson was chosen 
to represent Albemarle County in the House 
of Burgesses of Virginia; and thus began 
his long political career of forty years. A 



l/ 



30 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

resolution which he formed at the outset is 
stated in the following letter written in 1792 
to a friend who had offered him a share in 
an undertaking which promised to be profit- 
able : — 

" When I first entered on the stage of 
public life (now twenty-four years ago) I 
came to a resolution never to engage, while 
in public office, in any kind of enterprise for 
the improvement of my fortune, nor to wear 
any other character than that of a farmer. 
I have never departed from it in a single 
instance ; and I have in multiplied instances 
found myself happy in being able to decide 
and to act as a public servant, clear of all 
interest, in the multiform questions that 
have arisen, wherein I have seen others em- 
barrassed and biased by having got them- 
selves in a more interested situation." 

During the next few years there was a 
lull in political affairs, — a sullen calm be- 
fore the storm of the Revolution ; but they 
were important years in Mr. Jefferson's life. 
In February, 1770, the house at Shad well, 
where he lived with his mother and sisters, 



MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 31 

was bui'ned to the ground, while the family 
were away. " Were none of my books 
saved ? " Jefferson asked of the negro who 
came to him, breathless, with news of the 
disaster. " No, master," was the reply, 
" but we saved the fiddle." 

In giving his friend Page an account of 
the fire, Jefferson wrote : " On a reasonable 
estimate, I calcidate the cost of the books 
burned to have been £200. Would to God 
it had been the money, — then had it never 
cost me a sigh ! " Beside the books, Jeffer- 
son lost most of his notes and papers ; but 
no mishap, not caused by his own fault, ever 
troubled his peace of mind. 

After the fire, his mother and the children 
took temporary refuge in the home of an 
overseer, and Jefferson repaired to Monti- 
cello, — as he had named the elevated spot 
on the paternal estate where he had already 
begun to build the house which was his 
home for the remainder of his life. 

Monticello is a smaU outlying peak, upon 
the outskirts of the mountainous part of 
Virginia, west of the tide-water region, and 



^ J- 



32 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

rising 580 feet above tlie plain at its foot. 
Upon its summit there is a space of about 
six acres, leveled partly by nature and partly 
by art ; and here, one hundred feet back 
from the brow of the liill, Jefferson built his 
house. It is a long, low building, — still 
standing, — with a Grecian portico in front, 
surmounted by a cupola. The road by 
which it is approached winds round and 
round, so as to make the ascent less diffi- 
cult. In front of the house three long ter- 
races, terminating in small pavilions, were 
constructed ; and upon the northern terrace, 
or in its pavilion, Jefferson and his friends 
used to sit on summer nights gazing off 
toward the Blue Ridge, some eighty miles 
distant, or upon the nearer peaks of the Rag- 
ged Mountains. The altitude is such that 
neither dew nor mosquitoes can reach it. 

To this beautiful but as yet uncompleted 
mountain home, Jefferson, in January, 1772, 
brought his bride. She was Martha Skel- 
ton, who had been left a widow at nineteen, 
and was now twei;ity-two, a daughter of John 
Wayles, a leading and opulent lawyer. 



MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 33 

Martha Skelton was a tall, beautiful, tiglily 
educated young woman, of graceful carriage, 
with hazel eyes, literary in her tastes, a 
skillful performer upon the spinnet, and a 
notable housewife whose neatly kept account 
books are still preserved. They were mar- 
ried at " The Forest," her father's estate in 
Charles City County, and immediately set 
out for Monticello. 

Two years later, in 1774, died Dabney 
Carr, a brilliant and patriotic young lawyer, 
Jefferson's most intimate friend, and the 
husband of his sister Martha. Dabney 
Carr left six small children, whom, with 
their mother, Jefferson took under his wing, 
and they were brought up at Monticello as 
if they had been his own children. Jeffer- 
son loved children, and he had, in common 
with that very different character, Aaron 
Burr, an instinct for teaching. While still 
a young man himself, he was often called 
upon to direct the studies of other young 
men, — Madison and Monroe were in this 
sense his pupils ; and the founding of the 
University of Virginia was an achievement 



34 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

long anticipated by him and enthusiastically 
performed. 

Jefferson was somewhat unfortunate in his 
own children, for, of the six that were born 
to him, only two, Martha and Maria, lived 
to grow up. Maria married but died young, 
leaving one child. Martha, the first-born, 
was a brilliant, cheerfid, wholesome woman. 
She married Thomas Mann Randolph, after- 
ward governor of Virginia. " She was just 
like her father, in this respect," says Mr. 
Bacon, the superintendent, — "she was al- 
ways busy. If she was n't reading or writ- 
ing, she was always doing something. She 
used to sit in Mr. Jefferson's room a great 
deal, and sew, or read, or talk, as he would 
be busy about something else." John Ran- 
dolph of Roanoke once toasted her — and it 
was after his quarrel with her father — as 
the sweetest woman in Virginia. She left 
ten children, and many of her descendants 
are still living. 

To her, and to his other daughter, Maria, 
who is described as being more beautiful 
and no less amiable than her sister, but not 



MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 35 

SO intellectual, Jefferson owed the chief hap- 
piness of his life. Like many another man 
who has won fame and a high position in the 
world, he counted these things but as dust 
and ashes in comparison with family affec- 
tion. 



IV 

JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 

Shortly after Mr. Jefferson's marriage, 
tlie preliminary movements of the Kevolu- 
tion began, and tliougli he took an active 
part in them it was not without reluctance. 
Even after the battle of Bunker HiU, namely, 
in November, 1775, he wrote to a kinsman 
that there was not a man in the British 
Empire who more cordially loved a union 
with Great Britain than he did. John Jay 
said after the Revolution : " During the 
course of my life, and until the second peti- 
tion of Congress in 1775, I never did hear 
any American of any class or description 
express a wish for the independence of the 
colonies." 

But these friendly feelings were first out- 
raged and then extinguished by a long series 
of ill-considered and oppressive acts, cover- 
ing, with some intermissions, a period of 



JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 37 

about twelve years. Of these the most note- 
worthy were the Stamp Act, which amounted 
to taxation without representation, and the 
impost on tea, which was coupled with a 
provision that the receipts should be applied 
to the salaries of officers of the crown, thus 
placing them beyond the control of the local 
assemblies. The crown officers were also 
authorized to grant salaries and pensions at 
their discretion ; and a board of revenue 
commissioners for the whole country was es- 
tablished at Boston, and armed with despotic 
powers. These proceedings amounted to a 
deprivation of liberty, and they were aggra- 
vated by the king's contemptuous rejection 
of the petitions addressed to him by the 
colonists. We know what followed, — the 
burning of the British war schooner, Gaspee, 
by leading citizens of Providence, and the 
famous tea-party in Boston harbor. 

Meanwhile Virginia had not been inactive. 
In March, 1772, a few young men, members 
of the House of Burgesses, met at the Ka- 
leigh Tavern in Williamsburg. They were 
Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and his 



38 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

brother, Thomas Jefferson, and a few others. 
They drew up several resolutions, the most 
important of which called for the ajDpoint- 
ment of a standing committee and for an 
invitation to the other colonies to appoint 
like committees for mutual information and 
assistance in the struggle against the crown. 
A similar resolution had been adopted in 
Massachusetts two years before, but without 
any practical result. The Virginia resolu- 
tion was passed the next day by the House 
of Burgesses, and it gave rise to those pro- 
ceedmgs which ushered in the Revolution. 

The first Continental Congress was to meet 
in Philadelphia, in September, 1774 ; and 
Jefferson, in anticipation, prepared a draft 
of instructions for the delegates who were to 
be elected by Virginia. Being taken ill 
himself, on his way to the convention, he 
sent forward a copy of these instructions. 
They were considered too drastic to be 
adopted by the convention ; but some of the 
members caused them to be published under 
the title of " A Summary View of the Rights 
of America." The pamplilet was extensively 



JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 39 

read in this country, and a copy which had 
been sent to London falling into the hands 
of Edmund Burke, he had it reprinted in 
England, where it ran through edition after 
edition. Jefferson's name thus became 
known throughout the colonies and in Eng- 
land. 

The " Summary View " is in reality a 
political essay. Its author wasted no time 
in discussing the specific legal and consti- 
tutional questions which had arisen between 
the colonies and the crown ; but he went to 
the root of the matter, and with one or two 
generalizations as bold and original as if 
they had been made by Rousseau, he cut the 
Gordian knot, and severed America from the 
Parliament of Great Britain. He admitted 
some sort of dependence upon the crown, 
but his two main principles were these : (1) 
that the soil of this country belonged to the 
people who had settled and improved it, and 
that the crown had no right to sell or give it 
away ; (2) that the right of self-government 
was a right natural to every people, and that 
Parliament, therefore, had no authority to 



40 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

make laws for America. Jefferson was 
always about a century in advance of his 
time ; and tlie " Summary View " substan- 
tially anticipated what is now the acknow- 
ledged relation of England to her colonies. 

Jefferson was elected a member of the 
Continental Congress at its second session ; 
and he made a rapid journey to Philadelphia 
in a chaise, with two led horses behind, 
reaching there the night before Washington 
set out for Cambridge. The Congress was 
composed mainly of young men. Frankhn, 
the oldest member, was seventy-one, and a 
few others were past sixty. Washington 
was forty-three ; John Adams, forty ; Patrick 
Henry, a year or two younger ; John Rut- 
ledge, thirty-six ; his brother, twenty-six ; 
John Langdon and WiUiam Paca, thirty-five, 
John Jay, thirty ; Thomas Stone, thirty-two, 
and Jefferson, thirty-two. 

Jefferson soon became intimate with John 
Adams, who in later years said of him ; 
" Though a silent member of Congress, he 
was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive 
upon committees and in conversation — not 



JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 41 

even Samuel Adams was more so — that he 
soon seized upon my heart." 

Jefferson, as we have seen, was not fitted 
to shine as an orator, still less in debate. 
But as a writer he had that capacity for style 
which comes, if it comes at all, as a gift of 
nature ; which needs to be supplemented, but 
which cannot be supplied, by practice and 
study. In some of his early letters there 
are slight reminders of Dr. Johnson's man- 
ner, and still more of Sterne's. Sterne in- 
deed was one of his favorite authors. How- 
ever, these early traces of imitation were 
absorbed very quickly ; and, before he was 
thirty, Jefferson became master of a clear, 
smooth, polished, picturesque, and individual 
style. To him, therefore, his associates natu- 
rally turned when they needed such a pro- 
clamation to the world as the Declaration of 
Independence ; and that document is very 
characteristic of its author. It was imasfina- 
tion that gave distinction to Jefferson both 
as a man and as a writer. He never dashed 
off a letter which did not contain some play 
of fancy ; and whether he was inventing a 



/ 



42 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

plough or forecasting the destinies of a great 
Democracy, imagination qualified the per- 
formance. 

One of the most effective forms in which 
imagination displays itself in prose is by the 
use of a common word in such a manner and 
context that it conveys an uncommon mean- 
ing. There are many examples of this rhe- 
torical art in Jefferson's writings, but the 
most notable one occurs in the noble first 
paragraph of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence : " When, in the course of human 
events, it becomes necessary for one people 
to dissolve the political bands which have 
connected them with another, and to assume 
among the powers of the earth the separate 
and equal station to which the Laws of 
Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a 
decent respect to the opinions of mankind 
requires that they should declare the causes 
which impel them to the separation." 

Upon this paragraph Mr. Parton elo- 
quently observes : " The noblest utterance of 
the whole composition is the reason given 
for making the Declaration, — ^A decent 



JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 43 

respect for the opinions of manhind,^ Tliis 
touclies the heart. Among the best emotions 
that human nature knows is the veneration 
of man for man. This recognition of the 
public opinion of the world — the sum of hu- 
man sense — as the final arbiter in all such 
controversies is the single phrase of the docu- 
ment which Jefferson alone, perhaps, of all 
the Congress, could have originated ; and in 
point of merit it was worth all the rest." 

Franklin and John Adams, who were on 
the committee with Jefferson, made a few 
verbal changes in his draught of the De- 
claration, and it was then discussed and re- 
viewed by Congress for three days. Congress 
made eighteen suppressions, six additions, 
and ten alterations ; and it must be admitted 
that most of these were improvements. For 
example, Jefferson had framed a paragraph 
in which the king was severely censured for 
opposing certain measures looldng to the sup- 
pression of the slave trade. This would have 
come with an ill grace from the Americans, 
since for a century New England had been 
enriching herseK by that trade, and the south- 
ern colonies had subsisted upon the labor 



44 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

which it brought them. Congress wisely 
struck out the paragraph. 

The Declaration of Independence was re- 
ceived with rapture throughout the country. 
Everywhere it was read aloud to the people 
who gathered to hear it, amid the booming 
of guns, the ringing of bells, and the display 
of fireworks. In Philadelphia, after the read- 
ing, the late king's coat of arms was burned 
in Independence Square ; in New York the 
leaden statue, in Bowling Green, of George 
lY. was " laid prostrate in the dust," and 
ordered to be run into bullets. Virginia had 
already stricken the king's name from her 
prayer-book ; and Rhode Island now forbade 
her people to pray for the king, as king, 
under a penalty of one hundred thousand 
pounds ! The Declaration of Independence, 
both as a political and literary document, has 
stood the test of time. It has all the classic 
qualities of an oration by Demosthenes ; and 
^ even that passage in it which has been criti- 
^V^-^ "cised — that, namely, which pronounces all 
men to be created equal — is true in a sense, 
the truth of which it will take a century or 
two yet to develop. 



'■^- 



V 

KEFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 

In September, 1776, Jefferson, having 
resigned liis seat in Congress to engage in 
duties nearer home, returned to Monticello. 
A few weeks later, a messenger from Con- 
gress arrived to inform him that he had 
been elected a joint commissioner with Dr. 
Franklin and Silas Deane to represent at 
Paris the newly formed nation. His heart 
had long been set upon foreign travel ; but 
he felt obliged to decline this appointment, 
first on account of the ill health of his wife, 
and secondly, because he was needed in Vir- 
ginia as a legislator. Not since Lycurgus 
gave laws to the Spartans had there been 
such an opportunity as then existed in the 
United States. John Adams declared : 
" The best lawgivers of antiquity would re- 
joice to live at a period like this when, for 
the first time in the history of the world, 



46 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

! three millions of people are deliberately 
/ choosing their government and institutions." 
Of all the colonies, Virginia offered the 
best field for reform, because, as we have 
already seen, she had by far the most aristo- 
cratic political and social system ; and it is 
extraordinary how quickly the reform was 
effected by Jefferson and his friends. In 
ordinary times of peace the task would have 
> been impossible ; but in throwing off the 

t 

' Enghsh yoke, the colonists had opened their 
minds to new ideas; change had become 
familiar to them, and in the general upheaval 
I the rights of the people were recognized. A 
year later, Jefferson wrote to Franklin : 
" With respect to the State of Virginia, in 
particular, the people seem to have laid 
aside the monarchical and taken up the 
republican government with as much ease 
as would have attended their throwing off 
an old and putting on a new set of clothes." 

/ Jefferson's greatness lay in this, that he 
was the first statesman who trusted the mass 
of the people. He alone had divined the 
fact that they were competent, morally and 



REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 47 

mentally, for self-government. It is almost 
impossible for us to appreciate Jefferson's 
originality in this respect, because the bold 
and untried theories for which he contended 
are now regarded as commonplace maxims. 
He may have derived his political ideas in 
part from the French philosophical writers 
of the eighteenth century, although there is 
no evidence to that effect ; but he was cer- 
tainly the first statesman to grasp the idea 
of democracy as a form of government, just 
as, at a later day, Walt Whitman was the 
first poet to grasp the idea of equality as a 
social system. Hamilton, John Adams, 
Pinckney, Gouverneur Morris, even Wash- 
ington himself, all believed that popular 
government would be unsafe and revolu- 
tionary unless held in check by a strong 
executive and by an aristocratic senate. 

Jefferson in his lifetime was often charged 
with gross inconsistency in his political 
views and conduct ; but the inconsistenc;y 
was more apparent than real. At times he 
strictly construed, and at times he almost 
set aside the Constitution ; but the clue to 



48 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

his conduct can usually be found in the 
fundamental principle that the only proj^er 
function of government or constitutions is to 
express the will of the people, and that the 
people are morally and mentally competent to 
/ / govern . "I am sure , " he wrote in 1 7 9 6 , " that 
the mass of citizens in these United States 
mean well, and I firmly believe that they 
will always act well, whenever they can obtain 
a right understanding of matters." And 
Jefferson's lifelong endeavor was to enable 
the people to form this " right understand- 
ing" by educating them. His ideas of the 
scope of public education went far beyond 
those which prevailed in his time, and con- 
siderably beyond those which prevail even 
now. For example, a free university course 
for the most apt pupils graduated at the 
grammar schools made part of his scheme, 
— an idea most nearly realized in the West- 
ern States ; and those States received their 
impetus in educational matters from the Or- 
I dinance of 1787, which was largely the pro- 
duct of Jefferson's foresight. 

Happily for Virginia, she did not become 



REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 49 

a scene of war until the year 1779, and, 
meanwhile, Jefferson and his friends lost no 
time in remodeling her constitution. There 
were no common schools, and the mass of 
the people were more ignorant and rough 
than their contemporaries in any other / 
colony. Elections were scenes of bribery, 
intimidation, and riot, surpassing even those 
which Hogarth depicted in England. Elka- 
nah Watson, of Massachusetts, describes 
what he saw at Hanover Court House, Pat- 
rick Henry's county, in 1778 : " The whole 
county was assembled. The moment I 
alighted, a wretched, pug-nosed fellow as- 
sailed me to swap watches. I had hardly 
shaken him off, when I was attacked by a 
wild Irishman who insisted on my swap- 
ping horses with him. . . . With him I 
came near being involved in a boxing- 
match, the Irishman swearing, I ' did not 
trate him like a jintleman.' I had hardly 
escaped this dilemma when my attention 
was attracted by a light between two very 
unwieldy fat men, foaming and puffing like 
two furies, until one succeeded in twisting 



50 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

a forefinger in a sidelock of the other's 
hair, and in the act of thrusting by this 
purchase his thumb into the latter's eye, he 
bawled out, ' King's Cruise,' equivalent in 
technical language to ' Enough.' " 

Quakers were put in the pillory, scolding 
women were ducked, and it is said that a 
woman was burned to death in Princess 
Anne County for witchcraft. The English 
church, as we have seen, was an estabhshed 
church ; and all taxpayers, dissenters as 
well as churchmen, were compelled to con- 
tribute to its support. Baptist preachers 
were arrested, and fined as disturbers of 
the peace. The law of entail, both as re- 
spects land and slaves, was so strict that 
their descent to the eldest son could not be 
prevented even by agreement between the 
owner and his heir. 

In his reformation of the laws, Jefferson 
was supported by Patrick Henry, now gov- 
ernor, and inhabiting what was still called 
the palace ; by George Mason, a patriotic 
lawyer who drew the famous Virginia Bill 
of Rights ; by George "VYythe, his old pre- 



REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 51 

ceptor, and by James Madison, Jefferson's 
friend, pupil, and successor, who in this year 
began his political career as a member of the 
House of Burgesses. 

Opposed to them were the conservative 
party led by R. C. Nicholas, head of the 
Virginia bar, a stanch churchman and gen- 
tleman of the old school, and Edward Pen- 
dleton, whom Jefferson described as " full 
of resource, never vanquished ; for if he 
lost the main battle he returned upon you, 
and regained so much of it as to make it a 
drawn one, by dexterous manoeuvres, skir- 
mishes in detail, and the recovery of small 
advantages, which, little singly, were impor- 
tant all together. You never knew when 
you were clear of him." 

Intense as the controversy was, fundamen- 
tal as were the points at issue, the speakers 
never lost that courtesy for which the Vir- 
ginians were remarkable ; John Randolph 
being perhaps the only exception. Even 
Patrick Henry — though from his humble 
origin and impetuous oratory one might 
have expected otherwise — was never guilty 



52 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of any rudeness to his opponents. What 

Jefferson said of Madison was true of the 

Virginia orators in general, — " soothing 

/ always the feelings of his adversaries by 

/ civilities and softnesses of expression." 

Jefferson struck first at the system of 
entail. After a three weeks' struggle, land 
and slaves were put upon the same footing 
as all other property, — they might be sold 
or bequeathed according to the will of the 
possessor. Then came a longer and more 
bitter contest. Jefferson was for abolishing 
all connection between church and state, and 
for establishing complete freedom of religion. 
? Nine years elapsed before Virginia could be 
brought to that point ; but at this session 
he procured a repeal of the law which im- 
posed penalties for attendance at a dis- 
senting meeting-house, and also of the law 
compelling dissenters to pay tithes. The 
fight was, therefore, substantially won ; and 
in 1786, Jefferson's " Act for establishing 
religion " became the law of Virginia.^ 

^ It is to be remembered that the support of public 
worship was compulsory in Massachusetts — the inhabit- 



REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 53 

Another far-reaching law introduced by 
Jefferson at this memorable session of 1776 
provided for the naturalization of foreigners 
in Virginia, after a two years' residence in 
the State, and upon a declaration of their 
intention to become American citizens. The 
bill provided also that the minor children 
of naturalized parents should be citizens of 
the United States when they came of age. 
The principles of this measure were after- 
ward embodied in the statutes of the United 
States, and they are in force to-day. 

At this session Jefferson also drew an act 
for establishing courts of law in Virginia, 
the royal courts having necessarily passed 
out of existence when the Declaration of 
Independence was adopted. Moreover, he 
set on foot a revision of all the statutes of 
Virginia, a committee with him at the head 
being appointed for this purpose ; and 
finally he procured the removal of the capi- 
tal from Williamsburg to Richmond. 

ants of certain cities excepted — down to the year 1833. 
An attempt to free the people from this burden, led by 
Dr. Childs, of Berkshire County, was defeated at the Con- 
stitutional Convention of 1820. 



54 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

All this was accomplished, mainly by 
Jefferson's efforts ; and yet the two bills 
upon which he set most store failed entirely. 
These were, first, a comprehensive measure 
of state education, running up through 
primary schools and grammar schools to a 
state university, and, secondly, a bill pro- 
viding that all who were born in slavery 
after the passage of the bill should be free. 

This was Jefferson's second ineffectual 
attempt to promote the abolition of slavery. 
During the year 1768, when he first became 
a member of the House of Burgesses, he had 
endeavored to procure the passage of a law 
enabling slave-owners to free their slaves, 
He induced Colonel Bland, one of the ablest, 
oldest, and most respected members to pro- 
pose the law, and he seconded the proposal ; 
but it was overwhelmingly rejected. " I, as 
a younger member," related Jefferson after- 
ward, " was more spared in the debate ; but 
he was denounced as an enemy to his coun- 
try, and was treated with the greatest inde- 
corum." 

In 1778 Jefferson made another attempt: 



REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 55 

/ — he brought in a bill forbidding the further 
importation of slaves in Virginia, and this 
[ was passed without opposition. Again, in 
1784, when Virginia ceded to the United 
States her immense northwestern territory, 
Jefferson drew up a scheme of government 
for the States to be carved out of it which 
included a provision " that after the year 
1800 of the Christian Era, there shall be 
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in 
any of the said States, otherwise than in., 
punishment of crimes." The provision was 
rejected by Congress. 

In his " Notes on Virginia, " written in the 
year 1781, but published in 1787, he said : 
" The whole commerce between master and 
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most bois- 
terous passions, the most unremitting despot- 
ism, on the one part, and degrading submis- 
sion on the other. Our children see this, and 
learn to imitate it. . . . With the morals 
of the people their industry also is destroyed. 
For in a warm climate no one will labor 
for himself who can make another labor for 
him. . . . Indeed, I tremble for my country 



56 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

when I reflect that God is just ; that his 
justice cannot sleep forever. . . . The Al- 
mighty has no attribute which can take sides 
with us in such a contest." 

When the Missouri Compromise question 
came up, in 1820, Jefferson rightly predicted 
that a controversy had begun which would 
end in disruption ; but he made the mistake 
of supposing that the Northern party were 
actuated in that matter solely by political 
motives. April 22, 1820, he wrote : " This 
momentous question, like a fire-bell in the 
night, awakened and filled me with terror. 
I considered it at once as the knell of the 
Union. ... A geographical line, coinciding 
with a marked principle, moral and political, 
once conceived and held up to the angry pas- 
sions of men, will never be obliterated ; and 
every new irritation will mark it deeper and 
deeper. . . . The cession of that kind of pro- 
perty, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle 
which would not cost me a second thought 
if, in that way, a general emancipation and 
expatriation could be effected ; and gradually 
and with due sacrifices I think it might be. 



REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 57 

But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, 
and we can neither hold him nor safely let 
him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-pre- 
servation in the other." 

« 

And later, he wrote of the Missouri Com- 
promise, as a '' question having just enough 
of the semblance of morality to throw dust 
into the eyes of the people. . . . The Fed- 
eralists, unable to rise again under the old 
division of Whig and Tory, have invented a 
geographical division which gives them four- 
teen States against ten, and seduces their old 
opponents into a coalition with them. Real 
morality is on the other side. For while the 
removal of the slaves from one State to 
another adds no more to their numbers than 
their removal from one country to another, 
the spreading them over a larger surface adds 
to their happiness, and renders their future 
emancipation more practicable." 

These misconceptions as to Northern mo- 
tives might be ascribed to Jefferson's ad- 
vanced age, for, as he liimseK graphically 
expressed it, he then had " one foot in the 
grave, and the other lifted to follow it ; " but 



68 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

it would probably be more just to say that 
they were due, in part, to his prejudice against 
the New England people and especially the 
New England clergy, and in part to the fact 
that his long retirement in Virginia had some- 
what contracted his views and sympathies. 
Jefferson was a man of intense local attach- 
ments, and he took color from his surround- 
ings. He never ceased, however, to regard 
slavery as morally wrong and socially ruin- 
ous ; and in the brief autobiography which he 
left behind him he made these predictions : 
" Nothing is more certainly written in the 
book of fate than that these people are to 
be free. Nor is it less certain that the two 
races, equally free, cannot live in the same 
government." 

History has justified the second as well as 
the first of these declarations, for, excepting 
that brief period of anarchy known as " the 
carpet-bag era," it cannot be maintained that 
the colored race in the Southern States have 
been at any time, even since their emancipa- 
tion, " equally free," in the sense of politically 
free, with their white fellow citizens. 



VI 

GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 

For three years Jefferson was occupied 
with the legislative duties already described, 
and especially with a revision of the Virginia 
statutes, and then, in June, 1779, he suc- 
ceeded Patrick Henry as governor of the 
State. It has often been remarked that he 
was, aU through life, a lucky man, but in 
this case fortune did not favor him, for the 
ensuing two years proved to be, so far as 
Virginia was concerned, by much the worst 
period of the war. 

The French alliance, though no doubt an 
ultimate benefit to the colonies, had at first 
two bad effects : it relaxed the energy of the 
Americans, who trusted that France would 
fight their battles for them ; and it stimulated 
the British to increased exertions. The Brit- 
ish commissioners announced that hence- 
forth England would employ, in the prosecu- 



60 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tion of the war, all those agencies which 
" God and nature had placed in her hands." 
This meant that the ferocity of the Indians 
would be invoked, a matter of special mo- 
ment to Virginia, since her western frontier 
swarmed with Indians, the bravest of their 
race. 

The colony, it must be remembered, w^as 
then of immense extent ; for beside the pre- 
sent Virginia and West Virginia, Kentucky 
and the greater part of Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois were embraced in it. It stretched, 
in short, from the Atlantic Ocean to the 
Mississippi River. Upon the seaboard Vir- 
ginia was especially vulnerable, the tide-water 
region being penetrated by numerous bays 
and rivers, which the enemy's ships could 
easily ascend, for they were undefended by 
forts or men. The total navy of the colony 
was four vessels, mounting sixty-two guns, 
and a few armed boats. The flower of the 
Virginia soldiery, to the number of ten thou- 
sand, were in Washington's army, and sup- 
phes of men, of arms, of ammunition and 
food were urgently called for by General 



GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 61 

Gates, wlio was battling against Cornwallis 
in North Carolina. The militia were sup- 
posed to number fifty thousand, which in- 
cluded every man between sixteen and fifty 
years of age ; but this was only one man for 
every square mile of territory in the present 
State of Virginia, and of these militiamen it 
was estimated that, east of the Blue Ridge, 
only about one in five was armed with a gun. 
The treasury was practically bankrupt, and 
there was a dearth of every kind of warlike 
material. 

Such was the situation which confronted, 
as Mr Par ton puts it, "a lawyer of thirty- 
six, with a talent for music, a taste for art, 
a love of science, literature, and gardening." 
The task was one calling rather for a soldier 
than a statesman ; but Mr. Jefferson faced it 
with courage, and on the whole with suc- 
cess. In retaliating the cruel measures of the 
British, he showed a firmness which must 
have been especially difficult for a man of 
his temperament. He put in irons and con- 
fined in a dungeon Colonel Henry Hamilton 
and two subordinate officers who had com- 



62 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

mitted atrocities upon American prisoners. 
He caused a prison-ship, like the ships of 
infamous memory which were employed as 
prisons by the British at New York, to be 
prepared ; and the exchange of captives be- 
tween Virginia and the British was stopped. 
" Humane conduct on our part," wrote Jef- 
ferson, "was found to produce no effect. 
The contrary, therefore, is to be tried. Iron 
will be retaliated by iron, prison-ships for 
prison-ships, and like for like in general," 
But in November, 1779, notice was received 
that the English, under their new leader. Sir 
Henry Clinton, had adopted a less barbarous 
system of warfare ; and fortunately Jeffer- 
son's measures of reprisal became unneces- 
sary. 

Hampered as he was by want of men and 
money, Jefferson did all that he could to sup- 
ply the needs of the Virginia soldiers with 
Washington, of the army in North Carolina, 
led by Gates, and of George Rogers Clarke, 
the heroic commander who put down the 
Indian uprising on the western frontier, and 
captured the English officer who instigated 



GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 63 

it, — that same Colonel Hamilton of whom 
mention has already been made. The story 

of Clarke's adventures in the wilderness, 

he was a neighbor of Jefferson, only twenty- 
six years old, — of his forced marches, of 
his masterful dealing with the Indians, and 
finally of his capture of the British force, 
forms a thrilling chapter in the history of the y 
American Revolution. 

Many indeed of Jefferson's constituents 
censured him as being over-zealous in his 
support of the army of Gates. He stripped 
Virginia, they said, of troops and resources 
which, as it proved afterward, were needed 
at home. But if Cornwallis were not de- 
feated in North Carolina, it was certain that 
he would overrun the much more exposed 
Virginia. If he could be defeated anywhere, 
it would be in the Carolinas. Jefferson's 
course, it is sufficient to say, was that recom- ^ 
mended by Washington ; and his exertions 
in behalf of the Continental armies were 
commended in the highest terms not only by ^ 
Washington, but also by Generals Gates, 
Greene, Steuben, and Lafayette. The mili- 



64 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tia were called out, leaving behind only so 
many men as were required to cultivate the 
land, wagons were impressed, including two 
belonging to the governor, and attempts were 
even made — extraordinary for Virginia — 
to manufacture certain much-needed articles. 
" Our smiths," wrote Jefferson, " are making 
five hundred axes and some tomahawks for 
General Gates." 

Thus fared the year 1779, and in 1780 
tilings went from bad to worse. In April 
came a letter from Madison, saying that 
Washington's army was on the verge of 
dissolution, being only half-clothed, and in a 
way to be starved. The public treasury was 
empty and the public credit gone. In Au- 
gust occurred the disastrous defeat of General 
Gates at Camden, which left Virginia at the 
mercy of Cornwallis. In October a British 
fleet under Leslie ravaged the country about 
Portsmouth, but failing to effect a juncture 
with Cornwallis, who was detained in North 
Carolina by illness among his troops, did no 
further harm. Two months later, however, 
Benedict Arnold sailed up the James River 



GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 65 

with another fleet, and, after committing 
some depredations at Richmond, sailed down 
again, escaping by the aid of a favorable 
wind, which hauled from east to west just 
in the nick of time for him. 

In June, 1781, Cornwallis invaded Vir- 
ginia, and no one suffered more than Jef- 
ferson from his depredations. Tarleton was 
dispatched to seize the governor at Monti- 
cello ; but the latter was forewarned by a 
citizen of Charlotteville, who, being in a 
tavern at Louisa when Tarleton and his 
troop swept by on the main road, immedi- 
ately guessed their destination, and mount- 
ing his horse, a fleet Virginia thoroughbred, 
rode by a short cut through the woods 
straight to Monticello, arriving there about 
three hours ahead of Tarleton. 

Jefferson took the matter coolly. He 
first dispatched his family to a place of 
safety, sent his best horse to be shod at a 
neighboring smithy, and then proceeded to 
sort and separate his papers. He left the 
house only about five minutes before the 
soldiers entered it. 



66 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Two slaves, Martin, Mr. Jefferson's body 
servant, and Caesar, were engaged in hid- 
ing plate and other articles under the floor 
of the portico, a single plank having been 
raised for that purpose. As Martin, above, 
handed the last article to Caesar under the 
floor, the tramp of the approaching cavalry 
was heard. Down went the plank, shutting 
in Csesar, and there he remained, without 
making any outcry, for eighteen hours, in 
darkness, and of course without food or 
water. One of the soldiers, to try Martin's 
nerve, clapped a pistol to his breast, and 
threatened to fire unless he would tell which 
way his master had fled. "Fire away, 
then," retorted the black, fiercely answering 
glance for glance, and not receding a hair's 
breath. 

Tarleton and his men scrupulously re- 
frained from injuring Jefferson's property. 
CornwaUis, on the other hand, who encamped 
on Jefferson's estate of Elk Hill, lying oppo- 
site Elk Island in the James River, destroyed 
the growing crops, burned all the barns and 
fences, carried off — " as was to be expected," 



GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 67 

said Mr. Jefferson — the cattle and horses, 
and committed the barbarity of killing the 
colts that were too young to be of service. 
He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. 
" Had this been to give them freedom," 
wrote Jefferson, " he would have done right ; 
but it was to consign them to inevitable 
death from the smallpox and putrid fever, 
then raging in his camp." 

" Some of the miserable wretches crawled 
home to die," Mr. Randall relates, " and 
giving information where others lay perishing 
in hovels or in the open air, by the wayside, 
these were sent for by their generous master ; 
and the last moments of all of them were 
made as comfortable as could be done by 
proper nursing and medical attendance." 

These dreadful scenes, added to the agita- 
tion of having twice been obhged, at a mo- 
ment's notice, to flee from the enemy, to say 
nothing of the anxieties which she must have 
endured on her husband's accoimt, were too 
much for Mrs. Jefferson's already enfeebled 
constitution. She died on September 6, 
1782. 



68 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Six slave women who were household ser- 
vants enjoyed for thirty years a kind of 
humble distinction at Monticello as " the 
servants who were in the room when Mrs. 
Jefferson died ; " and the fact that they 
were there attests the affectionate relations 
which must have existed between them and 
their master and mistress. " They have 
often told my wife," relates Mr. Bacon, 
" that when Mrs. Jefferson died they stood 
around the bed. Mr. Jefferson sat by her, 
and she gave him directions about a good 
many things that she wanted done. When 
she came to the children, she wept, and could 
not speak for some time. Finally she held 
up her hand, and, spreading out her four 
fingers, she told him she could not die happy 
if she thought her four children were ever to 
have a stepmother brought in over them. 
Holding her other hand in his, Mr. Jeffer- 
son promised her solemnly that he would 
never marry again ; " and the promise was 
kept. 

After his wife's death Jefferson sank into 
what he afterward described as " a stupor of 



GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 69 

mind ; " and even before that he had been, 
for the first and last time in his life, in a 
somewhat morbid mental condition. He was 
an excessively sensitive man, and reflections 
upon his conduct as governor, during the 
raids into Virginia by Arnold and Cornwallis, 
coming at a time when he was overwrought, 
rankled in his mind. He refused to serve 
again as governor, and desiring to defend 
his course when in that office, became a 
member of the House of Burgesses in 1781, 
in order that he might answer his critics 
there ; but not a voice was raised agfainst 
him. In 1782, he was again elected to the 
House, but he did not attend ; and both 
Madison and Monroe endeavored in vain to 
draw him from his seclusion. To Monroe 
lie replied : " Before I ventured to declare 
to my countrymen my determination to re- 
tire from public employment, I examined 
well my heart to know whether it were 
thoroughly cured of every principle of polit- 
ical ambition, whether no lurking particle 
remained which might leave me uneasy, when 
reduced wdthin the limits of mere private 



70 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

life. I became satisfied that every fibre of 
that passion was thoroughly eradicated." 

Jefferson was an impulsive man, — in 
some respects a creature of the moment ; 
certainly often, in his own case, mistaking, 
as a permanent feeling, what was really a 
transitory impression. His language to 
Monroe must, therefore, be taken as the 
sincere deliverance of a man who, at that 
time, had not the remotest expectation of 
receiving, or the least ambition to attain, 
the highest offices in the gift of the Ameri- 
can people. 



VII 

ENVOY AT PARIS 

Two years after his wife's death, namely, 
in 1784, eTeiferson was chosen by Congress 
to serve as envoy at Paris, with John Adams 
and Benjamin Franklin. The appointment 
came at an opportune moment, when his 
mind was beginning to recover its tone, and 
he gladly accepted it. It was deemed neces- 
sary that the new Confederacy should make 
treaties with the various governments of 
Europe, and as soon as the envoys reached 
Paris, they drew up a treaty such as they 
hoped might be negotiated. It has been 
described as " the first serious attempt ever 
made to conduct the intercourse of nations 
on Christian principles ; " and, on that ac- 
count, it failed. To this failure there was, 
however, one exception. " Old Frederick of 
Prussia," as Jefferson styled him, " met us 



72 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

cordially ; " and with him a treaty was soon 
concluded. 

In May, 1785, Franklin returned to the 
United States, and Jefferson was appointed 
minister. " You replace Dr, Franldin," 
said the Count of Yergennes when Jefferson 
announced his appointment. " I succeed, — 
no one can replace him," was the reply. 

Jefferson's residence in Paris at this criti- 
cal period was a fortunate occurrence. It 
would be a mistake to suppose that he de- 
rived his political principles from France : 
— he carried them there ; but he was con- 
firmed in them by witnessing the injustice 
and misery which resulted to the common 
people from the monarchical governments of 
Kurope. To James Monroe he wrote in 
June, 1785 : " The pleasure of the trip [to 
Europe] will be less than you expect, but 
the utility greater. It will make you adore 
your own country, — its soil, its climate, its 
equality, laws, people, and manners. My 
God ! how little do my countrjonen know 
what precious blessings they are in posses- 
sion of and which no other people on earth 



ENVOY AT PARIS 73 

enjoy ! I confess I had no idea of it my- 
self." 

To George Wythe he wrote in August, 
1786 : " Preach, my dear sir, a crusade 
against ignorance; establish and improve 
the law for educating the common people. 
Let our countrymen know that the people 
alone can protect us against these evils ; and 
that the tax which will be paid for this pur- 
pose is not more than the thousandth part 
of what will be paid to kings, priests, and 
nobles, who will rise up among us if we 
leave the people in ignorance." To Madi- 
son, he wrote in January, 1787 : " This is a 
goverment of wolves over sheep." Jefferson 
took the greatest pains to ascertain the con- 
dition of the laboring classes. In the course 
of a journey in the south of France, he wrote 
to Lafayette, begging him to survey the con- 
dition of the people for himself. "To do 
it most effectually," he said, " you must be 
absolutely incognito; you must ferret the 
people out of their hovels, as I have done ; 
look into their kettles ; eat their bread ; loll 
on their beds on pretense of resting your- 



74 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

self, but in fact to find if they are soft. 
You will feel a sublime pleasure in the 
course of the investigation, and a sublimer 
one hereafter, when you shall be able to 
apply your knowledge to the softening of 
their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat 
into their kettle of vegetables." 

These excursions among the French pea- 
santry, who, as Jefferson well knew, were ruin- 
ously taxed in order to support an extrava- 
gant court and an idle and insolent nobility, 
made him a fierce Republican. " There is 
not a crowned head in Europe," he wrote to 
General Washington, in 1788, "whose tal- 
ents or merits would entitle him to be elected 
a vestryman by the people of America." 

But for the French race Jefferson had an 
affinity. He was glad to live with people 
among whom, as he said, "a man might pass 
a life without encountering a single rude- 
ness." He liked their polished manners and 
gay disposition, their aptitude for science, for 
philosophy, and for art ; even their wines 
and cookery suited his taste, and his prefer- 
ence in this respect was so well known that 



ENVOY AT PARIS 75 

Patrick Henry once humorously stigmatized 
him as " a man who had abjured his native 
victuals." 

Jefferson's stay in Paris corresponded 
exactly with the " glorious " period of the 
French Revolution. He was present at the 
Assembly of the Notables in 1787, and he 
witnessed the destruction of the Bastille in 
1789. 

" The change in this country," he wrote 
in March, 1789, "is such as you can form 
no idea of. The frivolities of conversation | 
have given way entirely to politics. Men, 
women, and children talk nothing else. ... 
and mode has acted a wonderful part in the 
present instance. All the handsome young 
women, for example, are for the tiers etat^ and 
this is an army more powerful in France 
than the 200,000 men of the king." 

The truth is that an intellectual and 
moral revolution preceded in France the ^ 
outbreak of the populace. There was an 
interior conviction that the government of 
the country was excessively unjust and op- 
pressive. A love of liberty, a feeling of 



76 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

fraternity, a passion for equality moved the 
intellect and even the aristocracy of France. 
In this crisis the reformers looked toward 
America, for the United States had just 
trodden the path upon which France was 
entering. " Our proceedings," wrote Jef- 
ferson to Madison in 1789, "have been 
viewed as a model for them on every occa- 
sion. . . . Our [authority] has been treated 
like that of the Bible, open to explanation, 
but not to question." 

Jefferson's advice was continually sought 
by Lafayette and others ; and his house, 
maintained in the easy, liberal style of Vir- 
ginia, was a meeting place for the Revolu- 
tionary statesmen. Jefferson dined at three 
or four o'clock ; and after the cloth had been 
removed he and his guests sat over their 
wine till nine or ten in the evening. 

In July, 1789, the National Assembly 
appointed a committee to draught a consti- 
tution, and the committee formally invited 
the American minister to assist at their ses- 
sions and favor them with his advice. Tliis 
function he felt obliged to dechne, as being 



ENVOY AT PARIS 77 

inconsistent with his post of minister to the 
king. No man had a nicer sense of pro- i./ 
priety than Jefferson ; and he punctiliously 
observed the requirements of his somewhat 
difficult situation in Paris. 

What gave Mr. Jefferson the greatest 
anxiety and trouble, was our relations with 
the piratical Barbary powers who held the 
keys of the Mediterranean and sometimes 
extended their depredations even into the 
Atlantic. It was a question of paying trib- 
ute or going to war ; and most of the Euro- 
pean powers paid tribute. In 1784, for 
example, the Dutch contributed to "the 
high, glorious, mighty, and most noble, 
King, Prince, and Emperor of Morocco," 
a mass of material which included thirty 
cables, seventy cannon, sixty-nine masts, 
twenty-one anchors, fifty dozen sail-needles, 
twenty-four tons of pitch, two hundred and 
eighty loaves of sugar, twenty-four China 
punch-bowls, three clocks, and one "very 
large watch." 

Jefferson ascertained that the pirates 
would require of the United States, as the 



u 



78 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

price of immunity for its commerce, a trib- 
ute of about three hundred thousand dollars 
per annum. " Surely," he wrote home, " our 
people will not give this. Would it not be 
better to offer them an equal treaty? If 
they refuse, why not go to war with them ? " 
And he pressed upon Mr. Jay, who held the 
secretaryship of foreign affairs, as the office 
was then called, the immediate establishment 
of a navy. But Congress would do nothing ; 
and it was not till Jefferson himself became 
President that the Barbary pirates were dealt 
with in a wholesome and stringent manner. 
During the whole term of his residence at 
Paris he was negotiating with the Mediterra- 
nean powers for the release of unfortunate 
Americans, many of whom spent the best 
part of their lives in horrible captivity. 

Mr. Jefferson's self-imposed duties were 
no less arduous. He kept four colleges in- 
formed of the most valuable new inventions, 
discoveries, and books. He had a Yankee 
talent for mechanical improvements, and he 
was always on the alert to obtain anything 
of this nature which he thought might be 



ENVOY AT PARIS 79 

useful at home. Jefferson himself, by the 
way, invented the revolving armchair, the 
buggy-top, and a mould board for a plough. 
He bought books for Franklin, Madison, 
Monroe, Wythe, and himself. He informed 
one correspondent about Watt's engine, an- 
other about the new system of canals. He 
smuggled rice from Turin in his coat pock- 
ets ; and he was continually dispatching to 
agricultural societies in America seeds, roots, 
nuts, and plants. Houdin was sent over by 
him to make the statue of Washington ; 
and he forwarded designs for the new capi- 
tol at Kichmond. For Buffon he procured 
the skin of an American panther, and also 
the bones and hide of a New Hampshire 
moose, to obtain which Governor Sullivan 
of that State organized a hunting-party in 
the depth of winter and cut a road through 
the forest for twenty miles in order to bring 
out his quarry. 

Jefferson was the most indefatigable of 
men, and he did not relax in Paris. He 
had rooms at a Carthusian monastery to 
which he repaired when he had some special 



80 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

work on hand. He kept a carriage and 
horses, but could not afford a saddle horse. 
Instead of riding, he took a walk every 
afternoon, usually of six or seven miles, oc- 
casionally twice as long. It was while re- 
turning with a friend from one of these 
excursions that he fell and fractured his 
right wrist ; and the fracture was set so im- 
perfectly that it troubled him ever after- 
ward. It was characteristic of Jefferson 
that he said nothing to his friend as to the 
injury until they reached home, though his 
suffering from it was great ; and, also, that 
he at once began to write with the other 
hand, making numerous entries, on the very 
night of the accident, in a writing which, 
though stiff, was, and remains, perfectly 
clear. 

Mr. Jefferson's two daughters had been 
placed at a convent school near Paris, and 
he was surprised one day to receive a note 
from Martha, the elder, asking his permis- 
sion to remain in the convent for the rest 
of her life as a nun. For a day or two she 
received no answer. Then her father called 



ENVOY AT PARIS 81 

in his carriage, and after a short interview 
with the abbess took his daughters away ; 
and thenceforth Martha presided, so far as 
her age permitted, over her father's house- 
hold. Not a word upon the subject of her 
request ever passed between them ; and long 
afterward, in telling the story to her own 
children, she praised Mr. Jefferson's tact in 
dealing with what she described as a tran- 
sient impulse. 

After this incident, Jefferson, thinking y 
that it was time to take his daughters home, 
obtained leave of absence for six months; 
and the little family landed at Norfolk, No- 
vember 18, 1789. They journeyed slowly 
homeward, stopping at one friend's house 
after another, and, two days before Christ- 
mas, arrived at Monticello, where they were 
rapturously greeted by the slaves, who took 
the four horses from the carriage and drew \ 
it up the steep incline themselves ; and • 
when he alighted, Mr. Jefferson, in spite of 
himself, was carried into the house on the 
arms of his black servants and friends. 



VIII 

SECRETARY OF STATE 

Mr. Jefferson had a strong desire to 
resume his post as minister to France, but 
he yielded to Washington's earnest request 
that he should become Secretary of State in 
the new government. He lingered long 
enough at MonticeUo to witness the mar- 
riage of his daughter Martha to Thomas 
Mann Randolph, and then set out upon a 
cold, wet journey of twenty-one days, reach- 
ing New York, which was then the seat of 
government, late in March, 1790. He hired 
a small house at No. 57 Maiden Lane, and 
immediately attacked the arrears of work 
which had been accumulating for six months. 
The unusual confinement, aggravated, per- 
haps, by a homesickness, clearly revealed in 
his letters, for his daughters and for Monti- 
cello, brought on what seems to have been a 



SECRETARY OF STATE 83 

neuralgic headache which lasted for three 
weeks. It may have been caused in part 
by the climate of New York, as to which 
Mr. Jefferson observed : " Spring and fall 
they never have, so far as I can learn. They 
have ten months of winter, two of summer, 
with some winter days interspersed." But 
there were other causes beside homesickness 
and headache which made Jefferson unhappy 
in his new position. Long afterward he 
described them as follows : — 

" I had left France in the first year of 
her Revolution, in the fervor of natural 
rights and zeal for reformation. My con- 
scientious devotion to those rights could not 
be heightened, but it had been aroused and 
excited by daily exercise. The President 
received me cordially, and my colleagues 
and the circle of principal citizens apparently 
with welcome. The courtesies of dinners 
given to me, as a stranger newly arrived 
among them, placed me at once in their fa- 
miliar society. But I cannot describe the 
wonder and mortification with which the 
table conversations filled me. Politics were 



84 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the chief topic, and a preference of kingly 
over republican government was evidently 
the favorite sentiment. An apostate I 
could not be, nor yet a hypocrite ; and I 
found myself for the most part the only ad- 
vocate on the republican side of the ques- 
tion, unless among the guests there chanced 
to be some member of that party from the 
legislative houses." 

It must be remembered that Jefferson's 
absence in France had been the period of 
the Confederacy, when the inability of Con- 
gress to enforce its laws and to control the 
States was so evident and so disastrous that 
the need of a stronger central government 
had been impressed on men's minds. The 
new Constitution had been devised to supply 
that need, but it was elastic in its terms, and 
it avoided all details. Should it be construed 
in an aristocratic or in a democratic spirit, 
and should the new nation be given an aris- 
tocratic or a democratic twist ? This was a 
burning question,' and it gave rise to that 
long struggle led by Hamilton on one side 
and by Jefferson on the other, which ended 



SECRETARY OF STATE 85 

with the election of Jefferson as President 
in the year 1800. 

Hamilton and his party utterly disbelieved 
in government by the people.^ John Adams 
declared that the English Constitution, bar- 
ring its element of corruption, was an ideal 
constitution. Hamilton went farther and 
asserted that the English form of govern- 
ment, corruption and all, was the best prac- 
ticable form. An aristocratic senate, chosen 
for a long term, if not for life, was thought 
to be essential even by Mr. Adams. Ham- 
ilton's notion was that mankind were inca- 
pable of self-government, and must be gov- 
erned in one or two ways, — by force or by 
fraud. Property was, in his view, the ideal 
basis of government ; and he was inclined to 
fix the possession of ^' a thousand Spanish 
dollars " as the proper qualification for a 
voter. 

The difference between the Hamiltonian 
and the Jeffersonian view arises chiefly from 

1 The father of Miss Catherine Sedgwick was a lead- 
ing Federalist, and his daughter records that, though a 
most kind-hearted man, he habitually spoke of the peo- 
ple as " Jacobins" and " miscreants." 



86 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

a different belief as to the connection between 
/ education and morality. All aristocratic sys- 
tems must, in the last analysis, be founded 
either upon brute force or else upon the 
assumption that education and morality go 
hand-in-hand, and that the well-to-do and 
f best educated class is morally superior to the 
V less educated. Jefferson rejected this as- 
sumption, and all real believers in democracy 
must take their stand with him. He once 
stated his creed upon this point in a letter as 
follows : - 

"The moral sense or conscience is as 
much a part of man as his leg..or arm. . . . 
It may be strengthened by exercise, as may 
any particular limb of the body. This sense 
is submitted, indeed, in some degree to the 
guidance of reason, but it is a small stock 
which is required for this, even a less one 
than what we call common sense. State a 
moral case to a ploughman and a professor. 
The former will decide it as well and often 
better than the latter, because he has not 
been led astray by artificial rules." 

This is sound philosophy. The great prob- 



SECRETARY OF STATE 87 

lems in government, whether they relate to 
matters external or internal, are moral, not 
intellectual. There - are, indeed, purely in- 
tellectual problems, such as the question be- 
tween free silver and a gold standard ; and as 
to these problems, the people may go wrong. 
But they are not vital. No nation ever yet 
achieved glory or incurred destruction by tak- 
ing one course rather than another in a matter 
of trade or finance. The crucial questions 
are moral questions, and experience ,has 
shown that as to such matters the people 
can be trusted. As Jefferson himself said, 
" The will of the majority, the natural law 
of every society, is the only sure guardian of 
the rights of man. Perhaps even this may 
sometimes err ; but its errors are honest, soli- 
tary, and short-lived." 

Washington's cabinet was made up on the 
theory that it should represent not the party 
in power, but both parties, — for two parties 
already existed, the Federalists and the anti- 
Federalists, who, under Jefferson's influence, 
soon became kno\vn by the better name of 
Republicans. The cabinet consisted oi four 



88 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

members, Jefferson, Secretary of State, Ham- 
ilton, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox, 
Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph, 
Attorney-General. 

Knox sided almost always with Hamilton, 
and Randolph was an inconstant supporter 
of Jefferson. Though an able and learned 
man, he was given to hair-splitting and hesi- 
tation, and, in allusion to his habit of arguing 
on one side, but finally voting upon the other, 
Jefferson once remarked that he usually gave 
the shell to his friends, and reserved the 
oyster for his opponents. 

The political opinions of Jefferson and 
Hamilton were so diametrically opposed that 
the cabinet was soon torn by dissension. 
Hamilton was for a strong government, for 
surrounding the President with pomp and 
etiquette, for a central authority as against 
the authority of the States. In pursuance of 
these ideas, he brought forward his famous 
measures for assumption of the state debts 
by the national government, for the fimding 
of the national debt, and finally for the crea- 
tion of a national bank. Jefferson opposed 



SECRETARY OF STATE 89 

these measures, and, although the assumption 
and the funding laws had grave faults, and 
led to speculation, and in the case of many- 
persons to financial ruin, yet it must be admit- 
ted that Jefferson never appreciated their 
merits. 

The truth is that both Hamilton and Jef- 
ferson were essential to the development of 
this country ; and the principles of each have 
been adopted in part, and rejected in part. 
Hamilton's conception of a central govern- 
ment predominating over the state govern- 
ments has been realized, though not nearly 
to the extent to which he would have carried 
it. On the other hand, his various schemes 
for making the government into an aristo- 
cracy instead of a democracy have all been 
abandoned, or, like the Electoral College, 
turned to a use the opposite of what he in- 
tended. So, Jefferson's view of state rights 
has not strictly been maintained ; but his 
fundamental principles of popular govern- 
ment and popular education have made the 
United States what it is, and are destined, 
we hope, when fully developed, to make it 
something better yet. 



90 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

No less an authority than that of Wash- 
ington, who appreciated the merits of both 
men, could have kept the peace between 
them. Hamilton under an assumed name 
attacked Jefferson in the public prints. Jef- 
ferson never published a line unsigned ; but 
he permitted Philip Freneau, who had slight 
employment as a translator in his depart- 
ment, and the trifling salary of f 250 a year, 
to wage war against Hamilton in the gazette 
which Freneau published ; and he even stood 
by while Freneau attacked Washington. 
Washington indeed once gave Jefferson a 
hint on this subject, which the latter refused 
to take. " He was evidently sore and warm," 
wrote Jefferson, " and I took his intention to 
be that I should interfere in some way with 
Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment 
of translating clerk to my office. But I will 
not do it. His paper has saved our consti- 
tution, which was galloping fast into monar- 
chy. . . . And the President has not, . . . 
with his usual good sense and sang froid^ 
. . . seen that, though some bad things had 
passed through it to the public, yet the good 
have predominated immensely." 



SECRETARY OF STATE 91 

In the spring of 1792, Jefferson, who had 
now been two years in office, was extremely 
anxious to retire, not only because his sit- 
uation at Washington was unpleasant, but 
because his affairs at home had been so neg- 
lected during his long absences that he was 
in danger of bankruptcy. His estate was 
large, but it was incumbered by a debt to 
EngHsh creditors of §13,000. Some years 
before he had sold for cash a farm near 
Monticello in order to discharge this debt ; 
but at that time the Revolutionary war had 
begun, and the Virginia legislatiu'e passed 
an act inviting all men owing money to Eng- 
lish creditors to deposit the same in the state 
treasury, the State agreeing to pay it over to 
the English creditors after the war. Jeffer- 
son accordingly deposited the $13,000 in gold 
which he had just received. Later, however, 
this law was rescinded, and the money re- 
ceived under it was paid back, not in gold, 
but in paper money of the State, which was 
then so depreciated as to be almost worth- 
less. In riding by the farm thus disposed 
of, Jefferson in after years would sometimes 



92 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

point to it and say : " That farm I once sold 
for an overcoat ; " — the price of the over- 
coat having been the $13,000 in paper money. 
Cornwallis, as we have seen, destroyed Jef- 
ferson's property to an amount more than 
double this debt, which might be considered 
as a second payment of it; but Jefferson 
finally paid it the third time, — and this 
time into the hands of the actual creditor. 
Meanwhile, he wrote : " The torment of 
mind I endure till the moment shall arrive 
when I shall not owe a shilling on earth is 
such really as to render life of little value." 
Urged by all these motives, Jefferson had 
resolved to resign his office in 1792, not- 
withstanding the remonstrances of Wash- 
ington ; but the attacks made upon him by 
the Federalists, especially those made in the 
newspapers, were so violent that a retire- 
ment at that time would have given the pub- 
lic cause to believe that he had been driven 
from office by his enemies. Jefferson, 
therefore, concluded to remain Secretary of 
State a few months longer ; and those few, 
as it happened, were the most important of 
the whole term. 



SECRETARY OF STATE 93 

On January 21, 1793, King Louis of 
France was executed, and within a week 
thereafter England was at war with the new 
rulers of the French. Difficult questions at 
once arose under our treaties with France. 
The French people thought that we were in 
honor bound to assist them in their struggle 
against Great Britain, as they had assisted 
us ; and they sent over as minister " Citi- 
zen " Genet, in the frigate L'Embuscade. 
The frigate, carrying forty gims and three 
hundred men, sailed into the harbor of 
Charleston, April 8, 1795, with a hberty-cap 
for her figure-head, and a British prize in 
her wake. Citizen Genet, even for a French- 
man, was a most indiscreet and hot-headed 
person, and before he had been a week on 
shore he had issued commissions to priva- 
teers manned by American citizens. L'Em- 
buscade then proceeded to Philadelphia, 
where, as in Charleston, Citizen Genet was 
welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm. His 
coming was hailed by the Republicans gener- 
ally with rapture ; and their cry was for 
war. " I wish," wrote Jefferson, in a con- 



94 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

fidential letter to Monroe, " that we may be 
able to repress the people within the limits 
of a fair neutrality." 

This was the position taken also by 
Washington and the whole cabinet ; and it 
is a striking example of Jefferson's wisdom, 
justice, and firmness, that, although the 
bulk of the Republicans were carried off 
their feet by sympathy with France and 
with Genet, he, the very person in the United 
States who most loved the French and best 
understood the causes and motives of the 
French Revolution, withstood the storm, and 
kept his eye fixed upon the interests of his 
own country. England, contrary to the 
treaty which closed the Revolutionary War, 
still retained her military posts in the west ; 
and she was the undisputed mistress of the 
sea. War with her would therefore have 
been suicidal for the United States. The 
time for that had not yet come. Moreover, 
if the United States had taken sides with 
France, a war with Spain also would inev- 
itably have followed ; and Spain then held 
Florida and the mouth of the Mississippi. 



SECRETARY OF STATE 95 

Nevertheless, there were different ways of 
preserving neutrality : there were the offen- 
sive way and the friendly way. Hamilton, 
whose extreme bias toward England made 
him bitter against France, was always for 
the one ; Jefferson for the other. A single 
example will suffice as an illustration. M. 
Genet asked as a favor that the United 
States should advance an installment of its 
debt to France. Hamilton advised that the 
request be refused without a word of expla- 
nation. Jefferson's opinion was that the 
request should be granted, if that were law- 
ful, and if it were found to be unlawful, them 
that the refusal should be explained. Mr. 
Jefferson's advice was followed. 

Mr. Jefferson, also, though he firmly with- 
stood the many illegal and unwarrantable 
acts attempted by Genet, did so in such a 
manner as not to lose the friendship of the 
minister or even a degree of control over 
him. To Madison Jefferson wrote of Genet : 
" He renders my position immensely difficult. 
He does me justice personally ; and giving 
him time to vent himself and become more 



96 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

cool, I am on a footing to advise liim freely, 
and lie respects it ; but he will break out 
again on tbe very first occasion." 

Finally Citizen Genet, becoming desper- 
ate, fitted out one of L'Embuscade's prizes 
as a frigate to be used against England, 
which amounted on the part of the United 
States to a breach of neutrahty ; and being 
hindered in sending her to sea, he threat- 
ened to appeal from the President to the 
people of the United States. Thereupon 
the question arose, what shall be done with 
Genet ? and upon this question the cabinet 
divided with more than usual acrimony. 
Knox was for sending him out of the coun- 
try without ceremony ; Hamilton for pub- 
lishing the whole correspondence between 
him and the government, with a statement 
of his proceedings. Jefferson was for send- 
ins: an account of the affair to the French 
government, with copies of the correspond- 
ence, and a request for Genet's recall. 
Meanwhile the whole country was thrown 
into a state of tumultuous excitement. There 
was a riot in Philadelphia ; and even the 



SECRETARY OF STATE 97 

sacred character of Wasliington was assailed 
in prose and verse. 

The President decided to adopt the course 
proposed by Jefferson; France appointed 
another minister, and the Genet episode 
ended by his marriage to a daughter of 
George Clinton, governor of New York, in 
which State he lived thereafter as a respect- 
able citizen and a patron of agriculture. 
He died in the year 1834. 

The summer of delirium at Philadelphia 
culminated in the panic and desolation of 
the yellow fever, and every member of the 
government fled from the city, Jefferson be- 
ing the last to depart. 

When, in the next year, the correspond- 
ence between Genet and Jefferson, and be- 
tween the English minister and Jefferson, 
was published, the Secretary was seen to 
have conducted it on his part with so much 
ability, discretion, and tact, and with so 
true a sense of what was due to each nation 
concerned, that he may be said to have re- 
tired to his farm in a blaze of glory. 



IX 

iHE TWO PAETIES 

When Jefferson at last found himself at 
Monticello, having resigned his office as 
Secretary of State, he declared and believed 
that he had done with politics forever. To 
various correspondents he wrote as follows : 
"I think that I shall never take another 
newspaper of any sort. I find my mind 
totally absorbed in my rural occupations. 
. . . No circumtances, my dear sir, will ever 
more tempt me to engage in anything public. 
... I would not give up my retirement for 
the empire of the universe." 

When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting 
him to accept the Republican nomination 
for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied : 
" The little spice of ambition which I had 
in my younger days has long since evapo- 
rated, and I set still less store by a post- 
humous than present fame. The question 



THE TWO PARTIES 99 

is forever closed with me." Nevertheless, 
within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted 
the nomination, chiefly, it isprobable,because, 
with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the 
Republican candidate would be defeated as 
President, but elected as Vice-President. It 
must be remembered that at that time the 
candidate receiving the next to the highest 
number of electoral votes was declared to be 
Vice-President ; so that there was always a 
probability that the presidential candidate 
of the party defeated would be chosen to the 
second office. 

There were several reasons why Jefferson 
would have been glad to receive the office of 
Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable 
responsibility ; it called for no great expen- 
diture of money in the way of entertain- 
ments ; it carried a good salary ; it required 
only a few months' residence at Washington. 
" Mr. Jefferson often told me," remarks 
Mr. Bacon, " that the office of Vice-President 
was far preferable to that of President." 

Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Repub- 
lican nominee for President, and, as he doubt- 



100 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

less expected, was elected Vice-President, 
the vote standing as follows : Adams, 71 ; 
Jefferson, 68 ; Pinckney, 59 ; Burr, 30. 

It is significant of Mr. Jefferson's high 
standing in the country that many people 
believed that he would not deign to accept 
the office of Vice-President ; and Madison 
wrote advising him to come to Washington 
on the 4th of March, and take the oath of 
office, in order that this belief might be dis- 
pelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bring- 
ing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately 
discovered, and a little manuscript book writ- 
ten in his law-student days, marked " Parlia- 
mentary Pocket-Book." This was the basis 
of that careful and elaborate " Manual of 
Parliamentary Practice " which Jefferson left 
as his legacy to the Senate. 

Upon receiving news of the election Jef- 
ferson had written to Madison : " If Mr. 
Adams can be induced to administer the gov- 
ernment on its true principles, and to relin- 
quish his bias to an English Constitution, it 
is to be considered whether it would not be, 
on the whole, for the public good to come to 



THE TWO PARTIES 101 

a good understanding with him as to his . 
future elections. He is perhaps the only 
sure barrier against Hamilton's getting in." 

Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his 
administration, was inclined to be confiden- 
tial with Mr. Jefferson ; but soon, by one of 
those sudden turns not infrequent with him, 
he took a different course, and thenceforth 
treated the Vice-President with nothing more 
than bare civility. 

It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations 
between Federalist and Republican were al- 
most impossible. In a letter written at this 
period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson 
said : " You and I have formerly seen warm 
debates, and high political passions. But 
(gentlemen of different politics would then 
speak to each other, and separate the business 
of the Senate from that of society. It is not 
so now. Men who have been intimate all 
their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, 
and turn their heads another way, lest they 
should be obliged to touch their hats." 

These party feelings were intensified in the 
year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z 



102 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

business. Mr. Adams had sent three com- 
missioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. 
Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign 
Affairs, held aloof from them ; but they were 
informed by certain mysterious agents that 
a treaty could be had on three conditions, 
(1) that the President should apologize for 
certain expressions in his recent message to 
Congress ; (2) that the United States should 
loan a large sum of money to the French 
government ; (3) that a douceur of $25,000 
should be given to Talleyrand's agents. 

These insulting proposals were indignantly 
rejected by the commissioners, and being re- 
ported in this country, they aroused a storm 
of popular indignation. Preparations for war 
were made forthwith. General Washing- 
ton, though in failing health, was appointed 
commander-in-chief, — the real command be- 
ing expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who 
was named second ; men and supplies were 
voted ; letters of marque were issued, and war 
actually prevailed upon the high seas. The 
situation redounded greatly to the advantage 
of the Federalists, for they were always as 



THE TWO PARTIES 103 

eager to go to war with France as they were 
reluctant to go to war with England. The 
newly appointed officers were drawn almost, 
if not quite, without exception from the Fed- 
eralist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on 
the verge of that military career which he 
had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most 
intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after 
his death, " that in the changes and chances 
of time we would be involved in some war 
which might strengthen our union and nerve 
our executive." So late as 1802, Hamilton 
wrote to Morris, " there must be a systematic 
and persevering endeavor to establish the 
future of a great empire on foundations much 
firmer than have yet been devised." At this 
very time he was negotiating with Miranda 
and with the British government, his design 
being to use against Mexico the army raised 
in expectation of a war with France. 

Hamilton was not the man to overturn 
the government out of personal ambition, 
nor even in order to set up a monarchy in 
place of a republic. But he had convinced 
himself that the republic must some day fall 



104 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of its own weight. He was always antici- 
pating a " crisis," and this word is repeated 
over and over again in his correspondence. 
It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that 
pathetic document which he wrote on the eve 
of his fatal duel. When the " crisis " came, 
Hamilton meant to be on hand ; and, if pos- 
sible, at the head of an army. 

However, the X Y Z affair ended peace- 
fully. The warlike spirit shown by the people 
of the United States had a wholesome effect 
upon the French government ; and at their 
suggestion new envoys were sent over by the 
President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. 
This wise and patriotic act upon the part of 
Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but 
it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists 
and ruined his position in that party. 

But what was Mr. Jefferson's attitude 
during this business ? He was not for war, 
and he contended that a distinction should 
be made between the acts of Talleyrand and 
his agents, and the real disposition of the 
French people. He wrote as follows ; " In- 
experienced in such manoeuvres, the people 



THE TWO PARTIES 105 

did not permit themselves even to suspect 
that the turpitude of private swindlers might 
mingle itself unobserved, and give its own 
hue to the communications of the French 
government, of whose participation there was 
neither proof nor probability." And again: 
" But as I view a peace between France and 
England the ensuing winter to be certain, 
I have thought it would have been better for 
us to have contrived to bear from France 
through the present summer what we have 
been bearing both from her and from Eng- 
land these four years, and still continue to 
bear from England, and to have required in- 
demnification in the hour of peace, when, I 
firmly believe, it woidd have been yielded 
by both." 

But this is bad political philosophy. A 
nation cannot obtain justice by submitting 
to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jef- 
ferson himself had written long before : "I ^'' 
think it is our interest to punish the first 
insult, because an insult unpunished is the 
parent of many others." It is possible that 
he was misled at this juncture by his liking 



106 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

for France, and by his dislike of the Feder- 
alists and of their British proclivities. It is 
true that the bribe demanded by Talley- 
rand's agents might be considered, to use 
Mr. Jefferson's words, as " the turpitude of 
private swindlers ; " but the demand for a 
loan and for a retraction could be regarded 
only as national acts, being acts of the 
French government, although the bulk of 
the French people might repudiate them. 

Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in 
the position which he took, he maintained it 
with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For 
the moment, the Federalists had everything 
their own way. They carried the election. 
Hamilton's oft-anticipated " crisis " seemed 
to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly 
waited till the storm should blow over. " Our 
countrymen," he wrote to a friend, " are es- 
sentially Republicans. They retain unadul- 
terated the principles of '76, and those who 
are conscious of no change in themselves 
have nothing to fear in the long run." 

And so it proved. The ascendency of 
the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de- 



THE TWO PARTIES' 107 

stroyed forever, by the political crimes and 
follies which they committed ; and especially 
by the alien and sedition laws. The reader 
need hardly be reminded that the alien law 
gave the President authority to banish from 
the country "all such aliens as lie should 
judge dangerous to the peace and safety 
of the United States," — a despotic power 
which no king of England ever possessed. 
The sedition act made it a crime, punishable 
by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write 
anything " false, scandalous, and malicious," 
with intent to excite against either House of 
Congress or against the President, " the hatred 
of the good people of the United States." 
It can readily be seen what gross oppression 
was possible under this elastic law, inter- 
preted by judges who, to a man, were mem- 
bers of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of 
Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a politi- 
cal meeting a letter which he had received 
expressing astonishment that the President's 
recent address to the House of Representa- 
tives had not been answered by "an order 
to send him to a mad-house." For this Mr. 



108 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a 
veritable dungeon. 

These unconstitutional and un-American 
laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson 
and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson 
wrote : " For my own part I consider those 
laws as merely an experiment on the Ameri- 
can mind to see how far it will bear an 
avowed violation of the Constitution. If 
this goes down, we shall immediately see 
attempted another act of Congress declaring 
that the President shall continue in office 
during life, reserving to another occasion 
the transfer of the succession to his heirs, 
and the establishment of the Senate for 
life. " 

Jefferson also prepared the famous Ken- 
tucky resolutions, which were adopted by 
the legislature of that State, — the author- 
ship, however, being kept secret till Jeffer- 
son avowed it, twenty years later. These 
much-discussed resolutions have been said 
to have originated the doctrine of nullifica- 
tion, and to contain that principle of seces- 
sion upon which the South acted in 1861. 



THE TWO PARTIES 109 

They may be summed up roughly as fol- 
lows : The source of all political power is in 
the people. The people have, by the compact 
known as the Constitution, granted certain 
specified powers to the federal government ; 
all other powers, if not granted to the sev- 
eral state governments, are retained by the 
people. The alien and sedition laws assume 
the exercise by the federal government of 
powers not granted to it by the Constitu- 
tion. They are therefore void. 

Thus far there can be no question that 
Jefferson's argument was sound, and its 
soundness would not be denied, even at the 
present day. But the question then arose : 
what next? May the laws be disregarded 
and disobeyed by the States or by individu- 
als, or must they be obeyed until some com- 
petent authority has pronounced them void ? 
and if so, what is that authority ? We un- 
derstand now that the Supreme Court has 
sole authority to decide upon the constitu- 
tionality of the acts of Congress. It was so 
held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in 
the case of Marbury v. Madison, by Chief 



no THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Justice Marshall and his associates ; and that 
decision, though resisted at the time, has 
long been accepted by the country as a 
whole. But this case did not arise until 
several years after the Kentucky Resolutions 
were written. Moreover, Marshall was an 
extreme Federalist, and his view was by no 
means the commonly accepted view. Jeffer- 
son scouted it. He protested all his life 
against the assumj)tion that the Supreme 
Court, a body of men appointed for life, and 
thus removed from all control by the peo- 
ple, should have the enormous power of con- 
struing the Constitution and of passing upon 
the validity of national laws. In a letter 
written in 1804, he said: "You seem to 
think it devolved on the judges to decide 
the validity of the sedition law. But no- 
thing in the Constitution has given them a 
right to decide for the executive more than 
the executive to decide for them. But the 
opinion which gives to the judges the right 
to decide what laws are constitutional and 
what not — not only for themselves in their 
own sphere of action, but for the legislature 



THE TWO PARTIES 111 

and executive also in their spheres — would 
make the judiciary a despotic branch." i 

In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson 
argued, first, that the Constitution was a 
compact between the States; secondly, that 
no person or body had been appointed by 
the Constitution as a common judge in re- 
spect to questions arising under the Consti- 
tution between any one State and Congress, 
or between the people and Congress ; and 
thirdly, " as in all other cases of compact 
among powers having no common judge, 
each party has an equal right to judge for 
itself, as well of infractions as of the mode 
and measure of redress." It was open to 
him to take this view, because it had not 
yet been decided that the Supreme Court 
was the " common judge " appointed by the 
Constitution ; and the Constitution itself 

^ Abraham Lincoln said in his first inaugural address : 
— "But if the policy of the government upon a vital 
question affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably 
fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the moment 
they are made, the people will cease to be their own 
masters ; having to that extent resigned their govern- 
ment into the hands of that eminent tribunal." 



112 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, 
the laws in question had not been passed 
upon by the Supreme Court, — they expired 
by limitation before that stage was reached. 

It must be admitted, then, that the Ken- 
tucky resolutions do contain the principles 
of nullification. But at the time when they 
were written, nullification was a permissible 
doctrine, because it was not certainly ex- 
cluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we 
have seen, the Constitution was interpreted 
by the Supreme Court as excluding this 
doctrine ; and that decision having been re- 
affirmed repeatedly, and having been acqui- 
esced in by the nation for fifty years, may 
fairly be said to have become by the year 
1861 the law of the land. 

Jefferson, however, by no means intend.ed 
to push matters to their logical conclusion. 
His resolutions were intended for moral 
effect, as he explained in the following let- 
ter to Madison : — 

" I think we should distinctly affirm all 
the important principles they contain, so as 
to hold to that ground in future, and leave 



' THE TWO PARTIES 113 

the matter in such a train that we may not 
be committed absolutely to push the matter 
to extremities, and yet may be free to push 
as far as events will render prudent." 

As to the charge that the Kentucky Keso- 
lutions imply the doctrine of secession, as 
well as that of nullification, it has no basis. 
The two doctrines do not stand or fall to- 
gether. There is nothing in the resolutions 
which implies the right of secession. Jeffer- 
son, like most Americans of his day, contem- 
plated with indifference the possibility of an 
ultimate separation of the region beyond the 
Mississippi from the United States. But 
nobody placed a higher value than he did on 
what he described " as our union, the last 
anchor of our hope, and that alone which is 
to prevent this heavenly country from becom- 
ing an arena of gladiators." 



X 

PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 

For tlie presidential election of 1800, 
Adams was again the candidate on the Fed- 
eral side, and Jefferson on the Republican 
side. Jefferson, by interviews, by long and 
numerous letters, by the commanding force 
of his own intellect and character, had at 
last welded the anti-Federal elements into a 
compact and disciplined Republican party. 
The contest was waged with the utmost bit- 
terness, and especially with bitterness against 
Jefferson. For this there were several causes. 
Jefferson had deeply offended two powerful 
classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and 
Tory element, and — excluding the dissent- 
ers — the religious element ; the former, by 
the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter 
by the statute for freedom of religion in Vir- 
ginia. These were among the most meri- 
torious acts of his life, but they produced an 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 115 

intense enmity which lasted till his death 
and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, 
though at times over-cautious, was at times 
rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his 
comments upon men and measures often got 
him into trouble. His career will be mis- 
understood unless it is remembered that he 
was an impulsive man. His judgments were 
intuitive, and though usually correct, yet 
sometimes hasty and ill-considered. 

Above all, Jefferson was both for friends 
and foes the embodiment of Republicanism. 
He represented those ideas which the Feder- 
alists, and especially the New England law- 
yers and clergy, really believed to be subver- 
sive of law and order, of government and 
religion. To them he figured as " a fanatic 
in politics, and an atheist in religion ; " and 
they were so disposed to believe everything 
bad of him that they swallowed whole the 
worst slanders which the political violence 
of the times, far exceeding that of the pre- 
sent day, could invent. We have seen with 
what tenderness Jefferson treated his wid- 
owed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her children. 



116 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

It was In reference to this very family that 
the Rev. Mr. Cotton Mather Smith, of Con- 
necticut, declared that Jefferson had gained 
his estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a 
widow and her children of £10,000, "all of 
which can be proved." 

Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. 
He was a religious man and a daily reader 
of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, 
less hostile to orthodox Christianity than 
John Adams. Nevertheless, — partly, per- 
haps, because he had procured the disestab- 
lishment of the Virginia Church, partly on 
account of his scientific tastes and his lik- 
ing for French notions, — the Federalists 
had convinced themselves that he was a vio- 
lent atheist and anti-Christian. It was a 
humorous saying of the time that the old 
women of New England hid their Bibles in 
the well when Jefferson's election in 1800 
became known. 

The vote was as follows : — Jefferson, 73, 
Burr, 73 ; Adams, 65 ; C. C. Pinckney, 64 ; 
Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson 
and Burr, the Republican candidate for 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 117 

Vice-President, the election was thrown 
into the House of Kepresentatives, voting by 
States. In that House the Federalists were 
in the majority, but they did not have a ma- 
jority by States. They could not, therefore, 
elect Adams ; but it was possible for them 
to make Burr President instead of Jefferson. 
At first, the leaders were inclined to do 
this, some believing that Burr's utter want 
of principle was less dangerous than the per- 
nicious principles which they ascribed to 
Jefferson, and others thinking that Burr, if 
elected by Federal votes, would pursue a 
Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson 
would wipe out the national debt, abolish 
the navy, and remove every Federal office- 
holder in the land. He was approached from 
many quarters, and even President Adams 
desired him to give some intimation of his 
intended policy on these points, but Jeffer- 
son firmly refused. 

As to one such interview, with Gouverneur 
Morris, Jefferson wrote afterward : " I told 
him that I should leave the world to judge 
of the course I meant to pursue, by that 



118 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

which I had pursued hitherto, believing it 
to be my duty to be passive and silent dur- 
ing the present scene ; that 1 should certainly 
make no terms ; should never go into the 
office of President by capitulation, nor with 
my hands tied by any conditions which 
would hinder me from pursuing the measures 
which I should deem for the public good." 

The Federalists had a characteristic plan : 
they proposed to pass a law devolving the 
Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, 
in case the office of President should become 
vacant ; and this vacancy they would be able 
to bring about by prolonging the election 
until Mr. Adams's term of office had expired. 
The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of 
course, would then become President. This 
scheme Jefferson and his friends were pre- 
pared to resist by force. " Because," as he 
afterward explained, "that precedent once 
set, it would be artificially reproduced, and 
would soon end in a dictator." 

Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly 
advocated the election of Jefferson ; and 
finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard, 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 119 

of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who had 
sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson 
as to his views upon the points already men- 
tioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected President, 
and the threatening civil war was averted. 

Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by 
his defeat, did not attend the inaugura- 
tion of his successor, but left Washinaton 
in his carriage, at sunrise, on the fourth of 
March ; and Jefferson rode on horseback to 
the Capitol, unattended, and dismounting 
fastened his horse to the fence with his own 
hands. The inaugural address, brief, and 
beautifully worded, surprised most of those 
who heard it by the moderation and liberality 
of its tone. " Let us," said the new Presi- 
dent, " restore to social intercourse that har- 
mony and affection without which liberty, 
and even life itself, are but dreary things." 

Jefferson served two terms, and he was 
succeeded first by Madison, and then by 
Monroe, both of whom were his friends and 
disciples, and imbued with his ideas. They, 
also, were reelected. For twenty-four years, 
therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian Pe- 



120 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

mocracy predominated in the government of 
the United States, and the period was an 
exceedingly prosperous one. Not one of the 
dismal forebodings of the Federalists was 
fulfilled ; and the practicability of popular 
government was proved. 

The first problem with which Jefferson 
had to deal was that of appointments to 
office. The situation was much like that 
which afterward confronted President Cleve- 
land when he entered upon his first term, — 
that is, every place was filled by a member 
of the party opposed to the new administra- 
tion. The principle which Mr. Jefferson 
adopted closely resembles that afterward 
adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no office- 
holder was to be displaced on account of his 
political belief ; but if he acted aggressively 
in politics, that was to be sufficient ground 
for removal. " Electioneering activity " was 
the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson's time, and 
"offensive partisanship" in Mr. Cleveland's. 

The following letter from President Jef- 
ferson to the Secretary of the Treasury will 
show how the rule was construed by him ; — 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 121 

" The allegations against Pope [collector] 
of New Bedford are insufficient. Although 
meddling in political caucuses is no part of 
that freedom of personal suffrage which 
ought to be allowed him, yet his mere pre- 
sence at a caucus does not necessarily in- 
volve an active and official influence in oppo- 
sition to the government which employs 
Mm." 

There were some lapses, but, on the whole, 
Mr. Jefferson's rule was adhered to ; and it 
is difficult to say whether he received more 
abuse from the Federalists on account of the 
removals which he did make, or from a fac- 
tion in his own party on account of the 
removals which he refused to make. 

His principle was thus stated in a letter : 
" If a due participation of office is a matter 
of right, how are vacancies to be obtained ? 
Those by death are few ; by resignation, 
none. ... It would have been to me a 
circumstance of great relief, had I found a 
moderate participation of office in the hands 
of the majority. I should gladly have left 
to time and accident to raise them to their 



122 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

just share. But their total exclusion calls 
for prompter corrections. I shall correct 
the procedure ; but that done, disdain to 
follow it. I shall return with joy to that 
state of things when the only questions con- 
f cerning a candidate shall, be, Is he honest? 
Is he capable ? Is he faithful to the Con- 
stitution ? " 

The ascendency of Jefferson and of the 
Republican party produced a great change 
in the government and in national feeling, 
but it was a change the most important part 
of which was intangible, and is therefore 
hard to describe. It was such a change as 
takes place in the career of an individual, 
when he shakes off some controlling force, 
and sets up in life for himself. The common 
people felt an independence, a pride, an elan^ 
which sent a thrill of vigor through every 
department of industry and adventure. 
/ The simplicity of the forms which Presi- 
dent Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the 
I national imagination of the change which 
/ had taken place. He gave up the royal cus- 
tom of levees ; he stopped the celebration 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 123 

of the President's birthday ; he substituted 
a written message for the speech to Con- 
gress delivered in person at the Capitol, and 
the reply by Congress, delivered in person 
at the White House. The President's resi- 
dence ceased to be called the Palace. He 
cut down the army and navy. He intro- 
duced economy in all the departments of the 
government, and paid off thirty-three mil-; . 
lions of the national debt. He procured the! 
abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of I '^ 
the bankruptcy law — two measures which j ( 
greatly decreased his own patronage, and / 1 
which called forth John Randolph's enco-j \ 
mium long afterward : " I have never seen \ j 
but one administration which seriously and ' 
in good faith was disposed to give up its 
patronage, and was willing to go farther 
than Congress or even the people themselves 
. . . desired; and that was the first ad- 
ministration of Thomas Jefferson." 

The two most important measures of the 
first administration were, however, the re- 
pression of the Barbary pirates and the 
acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson's 



124 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ineffectual efforts, while he was minister to 
France, to put down by force Mediterranean 
piracy have already been rehearsed. During 
Mr. Adams's term, two million dollars were 
expended in bribing the bucaneers. One 
item in the account was as follows, " A frig- 
ate to carry thirty-six guns for the Dey of 
Algiers ; " and this frigate went crammed 
with a hundred thousand dollars' worth of 
powder, lead, timber, rope, canvas, and other 
means of piracy. One hundred and twenty- 
two captives came home in that year, 1796, 
of whom ten had been held in slavery for 
eleven years. 

Jefferson's first important act as President 
was to dispatch to the Mediterranean three 
frigates and a sloop-of-war to overawe the 
pirates, and to cruise in protection of Ameri- 
can commerce. Thus began that series of 
events which finally rendered the commerce 
of the world as safe from piracy in the 
Mediterranean as it was in the British chan- 
nel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant 
comrades carried out this policy, and how at 
last the tardy naval powers of Europe fol- 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 125 

lowed an example which they ought to have 
set, every one is supposed to know. 

The second. important event was the acqui- j^J^^v^vlo 
sition of Louisiana. Louisiana meant the ' ^'^ 

whole territory from the Mississippi River to 
the Pacific Ocean, embracing about one mil- 
lion square miles. All this region belonged 
to Spain by right of discovery ; and early 
in the year 1801 news came from the Ameri- 
can minister at Paris that Spain had ceded 
or was about to cede it to France. The 
Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi had long been a source of annoyance 
to the settlers on the Mississippi River ; and 
it had begun to be felt that the United States 
must control New Orleans at least. If this 
vast territory should come into the hands of 
France, and Napoleon should colonize it, as 
was said to be his intention, — France then 
being the greatest power in Europe, — the 
United States would have a powerful rival on 
its borders, and in control of a seaport abso- 
lutely necessary for its commerce. We can 
see this now plainly enough, but even so able 
a man as Mr. Livingston, the American 



126 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

minister at Paris, did not see it then. On 
the contrary, he wrote to the government at 
Washington :"...! have, however, on all 
occasions, declared that as long as France 
conforms to the existing treaty between us 
and Spain, the government of the United 
States does not consider itself as having any 
interest in opposing the exchange." 

Mr. Jefferson's very different view was 
expressed in the following letter to Mr. 
Livingston : " . . . France, placing herself 
in that door, assumes to us the attitude of 
defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly 
for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble 
state would induce her to increase our facili- 
ties there. . . . Not so can it ever be in the 
hands of France ; the impetuosity of her 
temper, the energy and restlessness of her 
character, placed in a point of eternal fric- 
tion with us and our character, which, 
though quiet and loving peace and the pur- 
suit of wealth, is high-minded, despising 
wealth in competition with insult or injury, 
enterprising and energetic as any nation on 
earth, — these circumstances render it im- 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 127 

possible that France and the United States 
can continue long friends when they meet 
in so irritable a position. . . . The day that 
France takes possession of New Orleans fixes 
the sentence which is to restrain her forever 
within her low-water mark. . . . From that 
moment we must marry ourselves to the 
British fleet and nation." 

Thus, at a moment's notice, and in obedi- 
ence to a vital change in circumstance, Jef- 
ferson threw aside the policy of a lifetime, 
suppressed his liking for France and his dis- 
like for England, and entered upon that 
radically new course which, as he foresaw, 
the interests of the United States would re- 
quire. 

Livingston, thus primed, began negotia- 
tions for the purchase of New Orleans ; and 
Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a 
special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, 
it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, 
to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, 
but the whole of Louisiana. Monroe had 
not a word in writing to show that in pur- 
chasing Louisiana — if the act should be 



.128 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

repudiated by the nation — he did not ex- 
ceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry 

1 Adams remarks, " Jefferson's friends always 

Urusted him perfectly." 

The moment was most propitious, for 
England and France were about to close in 
that terrific struggle which ended at Water- 
loo, and Napoleon was desperately in need of 
money. After some hagghng the bargain 
was concluded, and, for the very moderate 
sum of fifteen million dollars, the United 
States became possessed of a territory which 
more than doubled its area. 

The purchase of Louisiana was confessedly 
an unconstitutional, or at least an extra-con- 
stitutional act, for the Constitution gave no 
authority to the President to acquire new 
territory, or to pledge the credit of the 
United States in payment. Jefferson him- 
self thought that the Constitution ought to 
be amended in order to make the purchase 
legal ; but in this he was overruled by his 
advisers. 

Thus, Jefferson's first administration ended 
with a brilliant achievement ; but this public 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 129 

glory was far more than outweighed by a pri- 
vate loss. The President's younger daugh- 
ter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804 ; and 
in a letter to his old friend, John Page, 
he said : " Others may lose of their abun- 
dance, but I, of my wants, have lost even 
the half of all I had. My evening prospects 
now hang on the slender thread of a single 
life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even 
this last cord of parental affection broken. 
The hope with which I have looked forward 
to the moment when, resigning pubhc cares 
to younger hands, I was to retire to that 
domestic comfort from which the last great 
step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted.'* 



XI 

SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 

The purchase of Louisiana increased Jef- 
ferson's popularity, and in 1805, at the age 
of sixty-two, he was elected to his second term 
as President by an overwhelming majority. 
Even Massachusetts was carried by the Ke- 
publicans, and the total vote in the electoral 
college stood : 162 for Jefferson and Clin- 
ton ; 14 for C. C. Pinckney and Rufus 
King, the Federal candidates. 

This result was due in part to the fact 
that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the 
Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though 
bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, 
who were blinded by their hatred of the 
President, was far more consonant with Fed- 
eral than with Republican principles ; and in 
his second inaugural address Jefferson went 
even farther in the direction of a strong cen- 
tral government, for he said : " Redemption 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 131 

once effected, the revenue thereby liberated 
may, by a just repartition among the States, 
and a corresponding amendment of the Con- 
stitution, be applied in time of peace to 
rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, edu- 
cation, and other great objects within each 
State. In time of war, . . . aided by other 
measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet 
within the year all the expenses of the year 
without encroaching on the rights of future 
generations by burdening them with the debts 
of the past." 

This proposal flatly contradicted what the 
President had said in his first inaugural ad- 
dress, and was in strange contrast with his 
criticism made years before upon a similar 
Federal scheme of public improvement, that 
the mines of Peru would not supply the 
moneys which would be wasted on this ob- 
ject. In later years, after his permanent 
retirement to Monticello, Jefferson seems to 
have reverted to his earlier views, and he 
condemned the measures of John Quincy 
Adams for making public improvements with 
national funds. 



132 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

But tlie President was no longer to enjoy 
a smooth course. One domestic affair gave 
him much annoyance, and our foreign rela- 
tions were a continual source of anxiety and 
mortification. 

Aaron Burr had been a brilliant .soldier 
of the Revolution, a highly successful lawyer 
and politician, and finally, during Mr. Jef- 
ferson's first administration, Vice-President 
of the United States. But in the year 1805 
he found himseK, owing to a complication of 
causes, most of which, however, could be 
traced to his own moral defects, a bankrupt 
in reputation and in purse. Such being his 
condition, he applied to the President for 
a foreign appointment ; and Mr. Jefferson 
very properly refused it, frankly explaining 
that Burr, whether justly or unjustly, had 
lost the confidence of the public. 

Burr took this rebuff with the easy good- 
humor which characterized him, dined with 
the President a few days later, and then 
started westward to carry out a scheme which 
he had been preparing for a year. His plans 
were so shrouded in mystery that it is diffi- 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 133 

cult to say exactly what they were, but it is 
certain that he contemplated an expedition 
against Mexico, with the intention of mak- 
ins: himself the ruler of that country ; and 
it is possible that he hoped to capture New 
Orleans, and, after dividing the United 
States, to annex the western half to his 
Mexican empire. Burr had got together a 
small supply of men and arms, and he floated 
down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went. 
Jefferson, with his usual good sense, per- 
ceived the futility of Burr's designs, which 
were based upon a false belief as to the want 
of loyalty among the western people ; but he 
took all needful precautions. General Wil- 
kinson was ordered to protect New Orleans, 
Burr's proceedings were denounced by a 
proclamation, and finally Burr himself was 
arrested in Alabama, and brought to Rich- 
mond for trial. 

The trial at once became a political affair, 
the Federahsts, to spite the President, mak- 
ing Burr's cause their own, though he had 
killed Alexander Hamilton but three years 
before, and pretending to regard him as an 



134 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

innocent man persecuted by the President 
for political reasons. Jefferson himself took 
a hand in the prosecution to the extent of 
writing letters to the district attorney full of 
advice and suggestions. It would have been 
more dignified had he held aloof, but the 
provocation which he received was very great. 
Burr and his counsel used every possible 
means of throwing odium upon the President ; 
and in this they were assisted by Chief 
Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. 
Marshall, though in the main a just man, 
was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political 
affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed 
the executive for not procuring evidence with 
a celerity which, under the circumstances, 
was impossible. He also summoned the 
President into court as a witness. The Presi- 
dent, however, declined to attend, and the 
matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, 
chiefly on technical grounds. 

The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle 
compared with the difficulties arising from 
our relations with England. That country 
had always asserted over the United States 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 135 

the right of impressment, a right, namely, to 
search American ships, and to take therefrom 
any Englishmen found among the crew. In 
many cases, EngHshmen who had been natu- 
ralized in the United States were thus taken. 
This alleged right had always been denied 
by the United States, and British persever- 
ance in it finally led to the war of 1812. 

Another source of contention was the neu- 
tral trade. During the European wars in 
the early part of the century the seaport 
towns of the United States did an immense 
and profitable business in carrying goods to 
European ports, and from one European port 
to another. Great Britain, after various 
attempts to discourage American commerce 
with her enemies, undertook to put it down 
by confiscating vessels of the United States 
on the ground that their cargoes were not 
neutral but belligerent property, — the pro- 
perty, that is, of nations at war with Great 
Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this 
was the fact, — foreign merchandise having 
been imported to this country to get a neu- 
tral name for it, and thence exported to a 



136 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

country to which it could not have been 
shipped directly from its place of origin. In 
April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. 
Monroe to London in order, if possible, to 
settle these disputed matters by a treaty. 
Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, 
our minister to England, sent back a treaty 
which contained no reference whatever to 
the matter of impressments. It was the best 
treaty which they could obtain, but it was 
silent upon this vital point. 

The situation was a perilous one ; Eng- 
land had fought the battle of Trafalgar the 
year before ; and was now able to carry 
everything before her upon the high seas. 
Nevertheless, the President's conduct was 
bold and prompt. The treaty had been ne- 
gotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, 
Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in 
favor of it, — especially by the merchants 
and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson 
refused even to lay it before the Senate, 
and at once sent it back to England. His 
position, and history has justified it, was 
that to accept a treaty which might be con- 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 137 

strued as tacitly admitting the right of im- 
pressment would be a disgrace to the coun- 
try. The other questions at issue were more 
nearly legal and technical, but this one 
touched the national honor ; and with the 
same right instinct which Jefferson showed 
in 1807, the people of the United States, 
five years later, fixed upon this grievance, 
out of the fog in which diplomacy had en- 
veloped our relations with England, as the 
true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812. 

Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe 
with the greatest consideration. At this 
period Monroe and Madison were both 
candidates for the Republican nomination 
for the presidency. Jefferson's choice was 
Madison, but he remained impartial between 
them ; and he withheld Monroe's treaty from 
publication at a time when to publish it would 
have given a fatal blow to Monroe's prospects. 
In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to 
disguise and soften Monroe's discredit. 

The wisdom of Jefferson's course as to the 
treaty was shown before three months had 
elapsed by an act of British aggression, which, 



138 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might 
fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 
1807, the British frigate Leopard, having 
been refused permission to search the Ameri- 
can frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Ches- 
apeake, which was totally unprepared for 
action, and, after kilhng three men and 
wounding eighteen, refused to accept the 
surrender of the ship, but carried off three 
alleged deserters. 

This event roused a storm of indignation, 
which never quite subsided until the insult 
had been effaced by the blood which was 
shed in the war of 1812. " For the first 
time in their history," says Mr. Henry Adams, 
" the people of the United States learned in 
June, 1807, the feeling of a true national 
emotion." " Never since the battle of Lex- 
ington," wrote Jefferson, " have I seen this 
country in such a state of exasperation as at 
present." 

War might easily have been precipitated, 
had Jefferson been carried away by the popu- 
lar excitement. He immediately dispatched 
a frigate to England demanding reparation, 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 139 

and he issued a proclamation forbidding all 
British men-of-war to enter the waters of the 
United States, unless in distress or bearing 
dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he 
meant to delay it for a while. 

To his son-in-law, John Eppes, he wrote : 
" Reason and the usage of civilized nations 
require that we should give them an oppor- 
tunity of disavowal and reparation. Our 
own interests, too, the very means of making 
war, require that we should give time to our 
merchants to gather in their vessels and 
property and our seamen now afloat." 

Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
even criticised the President's annual message 
at this time as being too warhke and " not 
in the style of the proclamation, which has 
been ahnost universally approved at home 
and abroad." It cannot truly be said, there- 
fore, that Jefferson had any unconquerable 
aversion to war. 

Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, 
went through the form of expressing his 
regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a 
special envoy to Washington to settle the 



140 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but 
not till the year 1811. 

In the mean time, both Great Britain and 
France had given other causes of offense, 
which may be summarized as follows : In 
May, 1806, Great Britain declared the 
French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to 
American as to all other shipping. In the 
following November, Napoleon retorted with 
a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all 
commerce with Great Britain. That power 
immediately forbade the coasting trade be- 
tween one port and another in the possession 
of her enemies. And in November, 1807, 
Great Britain issued the famous Orders in 
Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever 
with France and her allies, except on payment 
of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to 
pay according to the value of its cargo. Then 
followed Napoleon's Milan decree prohibiting 
trade with Great Britain, and declaring that 
all vessels which paid the tribute demanded 
were lawful prizes to the French marine. 

Such was the series of acts which assailed 
the foreign commerce of the United States, 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 141 

and wounded the national honor by attempt- 
ing to prostrate the country at the mercy of 
the European powers. Diplomacy had been 
exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right 
of impressment, the British decrees and orders 
directed against our commerce, — all these 
causes of offense had been tangled into a 
complication which no man could unravel. 
Retaliation on our part had become absolutely 
necessary. What form should it take ? Jef- 
ferson rejected war, and proposed an em- 
bargo which prohibited commerce between 
the United States and Europe. The mea- 
sure was bitterly opposed by the New Eng- 
land Federalists ; but the President's influ- 
ence was so great that Congress adopted it 
ahnost without discussion. 

Jefferson's design, to use his own words, 
was " to introduce between nations another 
umpire than arms ; " and he expected that 
England would be starved into submission. 
The annual British exports to the United 
States amounted to 150,000,000. Cutting 
off this trade meant the throwing out of 
work of thousands of British sailors and tens 



142 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of thousands of Britisli factory hands, who 
had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jef- 
ferson felt confident that the starvation of 
this class would brin^ such pressure to bear 
upon the English government, then engaged 
in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it 
would be forced to repeal the laws which 
obstructed American commerce. It is pos- 
sible that this would have been the result 
had the embargo been observed faithfully 
by all citizens of the United States. Jeffer- 
son maintained till the day of his death that 
such would have been the case ; and Madi- 
son, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted 
that the American state department had 
proofs that the English government was on 
the point of yielding. The embargo pressed 
hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped 
the exportation of her staples, — wheat and 
tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the 
financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his 
son-in-law. Colonel Randolph. But the Vir- 
ginians bore it without a murmur. " They 
drained the poison which their own Presi- 
dent held obstinately to their lips." 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 143 

It was otherwise in New England. There 
the disastrous effect of the embargo was not 
only indirect but direct. The New Eng- 
land farmers, it is true, could at least exist 
upon the produce of their farms ; but the 
mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants 
of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of 
the industry by which they lived. New 
England evaded the embargo by smuggling, 
and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the 
Federal leaders in that section beKeving, or 
pretending to believe, that it was a pro- 
French measure, were in secret correspond- 
ence with the British government, and medi- 
tated a secession of the eastern States from 
the rest of the country. They went so far, 
in private conversation at least, as to main- 
tain the British right of impressment ; and 
even the Orders in Council were defended 
by Gardenier, a leading Federahst, and a 
member of Congress. 

The present generation has witnessed a 
similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon 
the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in re- 
spect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland, 



144 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

liis attitude was criticised more severely by 
a group in New York and Boston tlian it 
was by the English themselves. 

Jefferson's effort to enforce the embargo 
and his calm resistance to New England 
fury showed extraordinary firmness of will 
and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, 
he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of 
War, who was then in Maine : " The Tories 
of Boston openly threaten insurrection if 
their importation of flour is stopped. The 
next post will stop it." 

Blood was soon shed ; but Jefferson did 
not shrink. The army was stationed along 
the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling ; 
gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. 
The embargo failed ; but Mr. Henry Adams, 
the ablesl^and fairest historian of this period, 
declares that it " was an experiment in poli- 
tics well worth making. In the scheme of 
President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the 
substitute for war. . . . Failure of the em- 
bargo meant in his mind not only a recur- 
rence to the practice of war, but to every 
political and social evil that war had always 



■3^ 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 145 

brought in its train. In such a case the 
crimes and corruptions of Europe, which 
had been the object of his political fears, 
must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem 
in the fat soil of America. To avert a dis- 
aster so vast was a proper motive for states- 
manship, and justified disregard for smaller 
interests." Mr. Parton observes, with al- 
most as much truth as humor, that the 
embargo was approved by the two highest 
authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon 
Bonaparte and the " Edinburgh Review." 

Perhaps the fundamental error in Jeffer- 
son's theory was that nations are governed 
mainly by motives of self-interest. He 
thought that England would cease to legis- 
late against American commerce, when it 
was once made plain tliat such a course was 
prejudicial to her own interests. But na- 
tions, like individuals, are influenced in their 
relations to others far more by pride and 
patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by 
material self-interest. The only way in 
which America could win respect and fair 
treatment from Europe was by fighting, or 



146 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

at least by showing a perfect readiness to 
fight. This she did by the war of 1812. 

The embargo was an academic policy, — 
the policy of a philosopher rather than that 
of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the 
French ambassador, wrote to Talleyrand, 
in May, 1806, that the President " has little 
energy and still less of that audacity which 
is indispensable in a place so eminent, what- 
ever may be the form of government. The 
slightest event makes him lose his balance, 
and he does not even know how to disguise 
the impression which he receives . . . He 
has made himself ill, and has grown ten 
years older." 

Jefferson had energy and audacity, — but 
he was energetic and audacious only by fits 
and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of 
ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all 
possible results for a man of action. During 
the last three months of his term he made 
no attempt to settle the difficulties in which 
the country was involved, declaring that he 
felt bound to do nothing which might em- 
barrass his successor. But it may be doubted 



SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 147 

if he did not unconsciously decline the task 
rather from its difficulty than because he 
felt precluded from undertaking it. Self- 
knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson's strong 
point. 

But he had done his best, and if his 
scheme had failed, the failure was not an 
ignoble one. He was still the most beloved, 
as well as the best hated man in the United 
States ; and he could have had a third term, 
if he would have taken it. 

He retired, permanently, as it proved, to 
Monticello, wearied and harassed, but glad 
to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his 
family, and among his neighbors. His fel- 
low-citizens of Albemarle County desired to 
meet the returning President, and escort 
him to his home ; but Mr. Jefferson, charac- 
teristically, avoided this demonstration, and 
received instead an address, to which he 
made a reply that closed in a fit and pa- 
thetic manner his public career. "... The 
part which I have acted on the theatre of 
pubHc life has been before them [his coun- 
trymen] , and to their sentence I submit it ; 



148 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

but the testimony of my native county, of 
the individuals who have known me in 
private life, to my conduct in its various 
duties and relations, is the more grateful as 
proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, 
from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, 
my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the 
world, ' whose ox have I taken, or whom 
have I defrauded ? Whom have I oppressed, 
or of whose hand have I received a bribe to 
blind mine eyes therewith ? ' On your ver- 
dict I rest with conscious security." 



XII 

A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 

Jefferson's second term as President 
ended March 4, 1809, and during the rest 
of his life he lived at Monticello, with occa- 
sional visits to his more retired estate at Pop- 
lar Forest, and to the homes of his friends, 
but never going beyond the confines of Vir- 
ginia. Just before leaving Washington, he 
had written : " Never did a prisoner released 
from his chains feel such relief as I shall on 
shaking off the shackles of power. Nature 
intended me for the tranquil pursuits of sci- 
ence by rendering them my supreme delight. 
But the enormities of the times in which 
I have lived have forced me to take a part 
in resisting them, and to commit myself on 
the boisterous ocean of political passions." 

Though no longer in office, Jefferson re- 
mained till his death the chief personage in 
the United States, and his authority continued 



150 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

to be almost supreme among the leaders as 
well as among the rank and file of the Ke- 
publican party. Madison first, and Monroe 
afterward, consulted him in all the most 
important matters which arose during the 
sixteen years of their double terms as Presi- 
dent. Long and frequent letters passed be- 
tween them ; and both Madison and Monroe 
often visited Jefferson at Monticello. 

The Monroe doctrine, as it is called, was 
first broached by Jefferson. In a letter of 
August 4, 1820, to Wilham Short, he 
said ; " The day is not far distant, when we 
may formally require a meridian through 
the ocean which separates the two hemi- 
spheres^ on the hither side of which no 
European gun shall ever be heard, nor an 
American on the other ; " and he spoke of 
"the essential policy of interdicting in the 
seas and territories of both Americas the 
ferocious and sanguinary contests of Europe." 
Later, when applied to by Monroe himself, 
in October, 1823, Jefferson wrote to him : 
" Our first and fundamental maxim should 
be never to entangle ourselves in the broils 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 151 

of Europe. Our second, never to suffer 
Europe to meddle in cisatlantic affairs." 
The whole letter, a long one, deserves to be 
read as the first exposition of what has since 
become a famous doctrine. 

The darling object of Mr. Jefferson's last 
years was the founding of the University of 
Virginia at Charlottesville. For this pur- 
pose he gave $1000 ; many of his neighbors 
in Albemarle County joined him with gifts ; 
and through Jefferson's mfluence, the legis- 
lature appropriated considerable sums. But 
money was the least of Jefferson's endowment 
of the University. He gave of the matur- 
ity of his judgment and a great part of 
his time. He was made regent. He drew 
the plans for the buildings, and overlooked 
their construction, riding to the University 
grounds almost every day, a distance of four 
miles, and back, and watching with pater- 
nal solicitude the laying of every brick and 
stone. His design was the perhaps over- 
ambitious one of displaying in the Univer- 
sity buildings the various leading styles of 
architecture ; and certain practical inconven- 



152 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

iences, such as the entire absence of closets 
from the houses of the professors, marred 
the result. Some offense also was given to 
the more religious people of Virginia, by the 
selection of a Unitarian as the first professor. 
However, JMerson's enthusiasm, ingenuity, 
and thoroughnbss carried the scheme through 
with success ; and the University still stands 
as a monument to its founder. 

It should be recorded, moreover, that 
under Jefferson's regency the University of 
Virginia adopted certain reforms, which even 
Harvard, the most progressive of eastern 
imiversities, did not attain till more than 
half a century later. These were, an elective 
system of studies ; the abolition of rules and 
penalties for the preservation of order, and 
the abolition of compulsory attendance at 
religious services. 

Mr. Jefferson's daily life was simple and 
methodical. He rose as soon as it was light 
enough for him to see the hands of a clock 
which was opposite his bed. Till break- 
fast time, which was about nine o'clock, he 
employed himself in writing. The whole 



-r 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 153 

morning was devoted to an immense corre- 
spondence ; the discharge of which was not 
only mentally, but physically distressing, 
inasmuch as his crippled hands, each wrist 
having been fractured, could not be used 
without pain. In a letter to his old friend, 
John Adams, he wrote : "I can read by 
candle-light only, and stealing long hours 
from my rest ; nor would that time be in- 
dulged to me could I by that light see to 
write. From sunrise to one or two o'clock, 
and often from dinner to dark, I am drudg- 
ing at the writing-table. And all this to 
answer letters, in which neither interest nor 
inclination on my part enters ; and often 
from persons whose names I have never 
before heard. Yet writing civilly, it is hard 
to refuse them civil answers." At his death 
Jefferson left copies of 16,000 letters, being 
only a part of those written by himself, and 
26,000 letters written by others to him. 

At one o'clock he set out upon horseback, 
and was gone for one or two hours, — never 
attended by a servant, even when he became 
old and infii'm. He continued these rides 



154 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

until he had become so feeble that he had 
to be lifted to the saddle ; and his mount 
was always a fiery one. Once, in Mr. Jef- 
ferson's old age, news came that a serious 
accident had happened in the neighboring 
village to one of his grandsons. Immedi- 
ately he ordered his horse to be brought 
round, and though it was night and very 
dark, he mounted, despite the protests of 
the household, and, at a run, dashed down 
the steep ascent by which Monticello is 
reached. The family held their breath till 
the tramp of his horse's feet, on the level 
ground below, could faintly be heard. 

At half past three or four he dined ; and 
at six he returned to the drawing-room, 
where coffee was served. The evening was 
spent in reading or conversation, and at 
nine he went to bed. '' His diet," relates a 
distinguished visitor, Daniel Webster, " is 
simple, but he seems restrained only by his 
taste. His breaM ast is tea and coffee, bread 
always fresh from the oven, of which he 
does not seem afraid, with at times a slight 
accompaniment of cold meat. He enjoys 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 155 

his dinner well, taking with his meat a large 
proportion of vegetables." The fact is that 
he used meat only as a sort of condiment to 
vegetables. " He has a strong preference 
for the wines of the continent, of which he 
has many sorts of excellent quality. . . . 
Dinner is served in half Virginian, half 
French style, in good taste and abundance. 
No wine is put on the table till the cloth is 
removed. In conversation, Mr. Jefferson is 
easy and natural, and apparently not ambi- 
tious ; it is not loud as challenging general 
attention, but usually addressed to the person 
next him." His health remained good till 
within a few months of his death, and he 
never lost a tooth. 

Scarcely less burdensome than his corre- 
spondence was the throng of visitors at Mon- 
ticello, of all nationalities, from every State 
in the Union, some coming from veneration, 
some from curiosity, some from a desire to 
obtain free quarters. Groups of people often 
stood about the house and in the halls to see 
Jefferson pass from his study to his dining- 
room. It is recorded that " a female once 



156 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

punched through a window-pane of the house 
with her parasol to get a better view of him." 
As many as fifty guests sometimes lodged 
in the house. "As a specimen of Vir- 
ginia life," relates one biographer, "we will 
mention that a friend from abroad came to 
Monticello, with a family of six persons, and 
remained ten months. . . . Accomphshed 
young kinswomen habitually passed two or 
three of the summer months there, as they 
would now at a fashionable watering-place. 
They married the sons of Mr. Jefferson's 
friends, and then came with their families." 
The immense expense entailed by these 
hospitalities, added to the debt, amounting 
to 120,000, which Mr. Jefferson owed when 
he left Washington, crippled him financially. 
Moreover, Colonel Randolph, who managed 
his estate for many years, though a good 
farmer, was a poor man of business. It was 
a common saying in the neighborhood that 
nobody raised better crops or got less money 
for them than Colonel Randolph. The em- 
bargo, and the period of depression which 
followed the war of 1812, went far to impov- 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 157 

erish the Virginia planters. Monroe died 
a bankrupt, and Madison's widow was left 
almost in want of bread. Jefferson himself 
wrote in 1814 : " What can we raise for the 
market ? Wheat ? we can only give it to our 
horses, as we have been doing since harvest. 
Tobacco? It is not worth the pipe it is 
smoked in. Some say whiskey, but all man- 
kind must become drunkards to consume it." 
Jefferson, also, was so anxious lest his slaves 
should be overworked, that the amount of 
labor performed upon his plantation was 
much less than it should have been. And, 
to cap the climax of his financial troubles, he 
lost $20,000 by indorsing to that amount 
for his intimate friend, Governor Nicholas, 
an honorable but unfortunate man. It 
should be added that Mr. Nicholas, in his last 
hours, " declared with unspeakable emotion 
that Mr. Jefferson had never by a word, by 
a look, or in any other way, made any allu- 
sion to his loss by him." 

In 1814, Mr. Jefferson sold his library 
to Congress for $23,950, about one haK its 
cost ; and in the very year of his death he 



k 



158 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

requested of the Virginia legislature that a 
law might be passed permitting him to sell 
some of his farms by means of a lottery, 
— the times being such that they could be 
disposed of in no other way. He even pub- 
lished some " Thoughts on Lotteries," — by 
way of advancing this project. The legis- 
lature granted his request, with reluctance ; 
but in the mean time his necessities became 
known throughout the country, and subscrip- 
tions were made for his rehef. The lottery 
was suspended, and Jefferson died in the 
belief that Monticello would be saved as a 
home for his family. 

In March, 1826, Mr. Jefferson's health 
Ijegan to fail; but so late as June 24 he 
was well enough to write a long letter in 
reply to an invitation to attend the fiftieth 
celebration, at Washington, of the 4th of 
July. During the 3d of July he dozed hour 
after hour under the influence of opiates, 
rousing occasionally, and uttering a few 
words. It was evident that his end was 
very near. His family and he himself fer- 
vently desired that he might live till the 4tli 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 159 

of July. At eleven in the evening of July 3 
he whispered to Mr. Trist, the husband of 
one of his granddaughters, who sat by him : 
" This is the fourth ? " Not bearing to dis- 
appoint him, Mr. Trist remained silent ; and 
Mr. Jefferson feebly asked a second time : 
" This is the fourth ? " Mr. Trist nodded as- 
sent. " Ah ! " he breathed, and sank into a 
slumber from which he never awoke ; but his 
end did not come till half past twelve in the 
afternoon of Independence Day. On the 
same day, at Quincy, died John Adams, his 
last words being, " Thomas Jefferson still 
lives ! " 

The double coincidence made a strong im- 
pression upon the imagination of the Ameri- 
can people. " When it became known," says 
Mr. Parton, " that the author of the Decla- 
ration and its most powerful defender had 
both breathed their last on the Fourth of 
July, the fiftieth since they had set it apart 
from the roll of common days, it seemed as 
if Heaven had given its visible and unerring 
sanction to the work which they had done." 

Jefferson's body was buried at Monticello, 



160 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and on the tombstone is inscribed, as he 
desired, the following : " Here was buried 
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration 
of American Independence, of the Statute of 
Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father 
of the University of Virginia." 

Jefferson's expectation that Monticello 
would remain the property of his descend- 
ants was not fulfilled. His debts were paid 
to the uttermost farthing by his executor 
and grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph ; 
but Martha Randolph and her family were 
left homeless and penniless. When this be- 
came known, the legislatures of South Caro- 
lina and Louisiana each voted to Mrs. Ran- 
dolph a gift of $10,000. She died suddenly, 
in 1836, at the age of sixty-three. Monti- 
cello passed into the hands of strangers. 

Jefferson had his faults and defects. As 
a statesman and ruler, he showed at times 
irresolution, want of energy and of audacity, 
and a misunderstanding of human nature ; 
and at times his judgment was clouded by 
the political prejudices which were common 
in his day. His attitude in the X Y Z 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 161 
business, his embargo policy, and his policy 
or want of policy after the failure of the 
embargo, — in these cases, and perhaps m 
these alone, his defects are exhibited. It 
is certain also that although at times frank 
and outspoken to a fault, he was at other 
times over-complaisant and insincere. To 
Aaron Burr, for example, he expressed him- 
self in terms of friendship which he could 
hardly have felt ; and, once, in writing to a 
minister of the gospel he implied, upon his 
own part, a belief in revelation which he did 
not really feel. It seems to be true also that 
Jefferson had an overweening desire to win 
the approbation of his fellow-countrymen; 
and at times, though quite unconsciously to 
himself, this motive led him into courses 
which were rather selfish than patriotic. 
This was the case, perhaps, in his negotia- 
tions with the English minister after the fail- 
ure of the embargo. It is charged against 
him, also, that he avoided unpleasant situa- 
tions ; and that he said or did nothing to 
check the E^publican slanders which were 
cast upon Washington and upon John 



^ 



162 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Adams. But when this much has been 
said, all has been said. As a citizen, hus- 
band, father, friend, and master, Jefferson 
was almost an ideal character. No man was 
ever more kind, more amiable, more tender, 
more just, more generous. To her children, 
Mrs. Randolph declared that never, never 
had she witnessed a particle of injustice in 
her father, — never had she heard him say a 
word or seen him do an act which she at the 
time or afterward regretted. ^ He was mag- 
nanimous, — as when he frankly forgave 
John Adams for the injustice of his mid- 
night appointments. 'M'hough easily pro- 
voked, he never bore malice. In matters of 
business and in matters of politics he was 
punctiliously honorable. How many times 
he paid his British debt has already been re- 
lated. On one occasion he drew his cheque 
to pay the duties on certain imported wines 
which might have come in free, — yet made 
no merit of the action, for it never came to 
light until long after his death. In the pre- 
sidential campaigns when he was a candi- 
date, he never wrote a letter or made a sign 



A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 163 

to influence the result. He would not say 
a word by way of promise in 1801, when a 
word would have given him the presidency, 
and when so honorable a man as John Adams 
thought that he did wrong to withhold it. 
There was no vanity or smallness in his 
character. It was he and not Dickinson 
who wrote the address to the King, set forth 
by the Continental Congress of 1775 ; but 
Dickinsonenjoyed the fame of it throughout 
Jefferson's lifetime. ^ 

Above all, he was patriotic and con- j | 
scientious. ^ When he lapsed, it was in some 
subordinate matter, and because a little self- 
deception clouded his sight. -^ But in all im- 
portant matters, in all emergencies, he stood 
firm as a rock for what he considered to 
be right, unmoved by the entreaties of his 
friends or by the jeers, threats, and taunts of 
his enemies. He shrank with almost fem- 
inine repugnance from censure and turmoil, 
but when the occasion demanded it, he 
faced even these with perfect courage and 
resolution. His course as Secretary of State, 
and his enforcement of the embargo, are I 
examples. 



< 



164 y THOMAS JEFFERSON 

" Jefferson's political career was bottomed 
upon a great principle which he never, for 
one moment, lost sight of or doubted, no 
matter how difficult the present, or how dark 
the future. He believed in the people, in 
their capacity for self-government, and in their 
right to enjoy it. This belief shaped his 
course, and, in spite of minor inconsistencies, 
made it consistent. ;!*-J[t was on account of 
this belief, and of the faith and courage with 
which he put it in practice, that he became 
the idol of his countrymen, and attained a 
unique position in the history of the world. 



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